Lady Tigers set for debut

The Mountain Home Lady Tigers open their 2014 volleyball season this week at the Kuna Klassic volleyball tourney Friday and Saturday at Kuna.

Jill Peterson is in her second season as head coach of the Lady Tigers and said this year's turnout for volleyball was down.

"The turnouts were really low this year. We were really surprised and a little disappointed, but, after that, we thought, one good thing is we're not going to have to make any cuts, which is always hard to do as a coach.

"But I am really impressed with the quality of the turnout, especially with what we have at the varsity level. We're small in numbers -- I only kept eight at the varsity level -- but the quality of the players is really high. I'm really pleased with that."

Coach Peterson lost five seniors to graduation last year and has three seniors back from last year.

"We lost some of our powerhouse players (to graduation), but we have some really experienced sophomores that are coming up and we're excited about those three."

This year's 4A Southern Idaho Conference is at six teams, with Nampa and Columbia both moving up to 5A, and Emmett down to 3A. Coach Peterson still sees a tough competitive conference.

"Absolutely. We're a little disappointed, because the three that we lost from our conference are the three teams that we did beat last year. We were successful against those guys, but we feel like we have a good chance against the other five remaining teams in our conference, so we're excited."

Coach Peterson indicated that her Lady Tigers will not be at full strength as they open their season at the Kuna Klassic over the coming weekend.

"We'll be down three of our players -- two are injured and one has a conflict," the coach said. "So we're pulling up some JVs, so it's going to be an interesting tournament. It's a great chance to get lots of touches and try out new rotations, and it's going to be good."

The Lady Tigers open at the Kuna Klassic this Friday and Saturday. They travel to Mountain View on Sept. 4 for a non-conference match. They open conference play at Bishop Kelly on Sept. 9, and are on the road Sept. 13 for the Twin Falls Invitational Tournament.

Their first home match is Sept. 16 against Skyview.