The Mineral County High girls volleyball team got its season off to a rough start on Friday and Saturday at the 10th Annual Yerington Volleyball Tournament. The team went 1-15 in the games it played over the course of the weekend.

In all the team’s games it was matched against teams from higher divisions.

High school teams are split into divisions by the school’s size based on enrollment. Mineral County High is a Division IV school.

“The girls actually played really well,” said Serpents coach Shelley Tweedy. “It was a really good experience for us to play up, even though we lost.”

Tweedy said the standout players were Ada Williams, who had four kills in one game; and Kelsey Viani Wittwer, who at least six kills during the weekend.

Tweedy said she used the tournament as an opportunity to stretch some of her news players. She put five junior varsity players in the game, and tried out two new setters.

One of the new setters was Alexa McFalls, who Tweedy said “set extremely well.”

“All in all, the girls played fairly competitive, we were just outranked by the division and I think there were some really good teams,” Tweedy said.

But there were some problems apparent in the Serpents play, Tweedy said.

The team had trouble serving the ball over the net, she said. To try and remedy the problem, Tweedy had the team run serving drills during the short practice on Monday.

Most of the varsity girls seemed to get the hang of the drill by the time it ended.

The Serpents first regular opponent was the Whittell Warriors. The game was played on Tuesday.

Tweedy said the Warriors are a “very competitive” team that just dropped down from Division III.

“I think as long as the girls keep their heads in the game, [and] stay in motion […] we should be alright,” Tweedy said.