Student Athlete of the Week: Amory Lady Panthers, Amory HS, Volleyball

AMORY, Miss. (WCBI Sports) — This week on our Student Athlete segment, we feature the Amory Lady Panthers Volleyball Team. A team that has struggled over its last six years as an athletic program, only averaging one to two wins per year. This year’s team is led by two seniors and has improved tremendously.

Over the last six years, this volleyball program averaged one to two wins per season, and now into their seventh season, they’ve doubled that win total.

They have more than five wins now, and they’re looking to continue to improve.

“It’s been great. We have a lot of dedicated girls. They want it more, so it’s been fun since it’s being my senior year doubling the season up and it’s exciting to win that many games because we never knew what it felt like. It feels pretty exciting,” says player Sarah Hampton.

“Everybody puts in more effort. From my freshman year, everybody has put in more effort than I know, because I never really worked as hard as I did my freshman year as I do now,” adds Laneisha Cooke.

“It’s been amazing. I have girls who want to try. They want to play. We have open gym, which is totally not mandatory. They’re there. They’re here you know they come, so it’s just a dedication. A matter of dedication,” says head coach Angel Greenhill.

The Lady Panthers took New Hope and Pontotoc to five sets and won, which is huge for this program, but if this team continues to strive to get better, a first ever playoff appearance would go a long way for them.

“I think we can if we can keep going. We keep fighting hard and beating teams that play us. Teams are going to take us serious, so if we take them like we play them, hard, and they don’t take us serious, we’ll beat them and they’ll get down, so if we keep the momentum up I can see us going deep in the playoffs,” Hampton says.

“That would be beyond our wildest dreams. Something that would we just can’t even fathom to do that,” adds Greenhill.

Amory returns to action Thursday, when they host Kossuth at 6:30 pm.