Jefferson varsity volleyball team lost to the Justice Wolves on their senior night, at home on Tuesday, Oct. 19.

Before the game began, all the coaches, parents, and crowd celebrated the senior players. Senior night is an honored tradition at Jefferson.

“The underclassmen did a really great job of making seniors feel special, and I’m sure it was tough because there were 10 seniors. The entire day was really fun for every senior. Starting with breakfast, the whole day was basically revolving around us,” senior Erin Brodnik said.

Early on, the Jefferson team offered roses to the Justice seniors as a show of good sportsmanship. As each senior was announced from Jeffeson’s cheer team, crowd, and administrators showed support by applauding each senior’s speech. Junior Victoria Wang, who plays defense specialist on the varsity volleyball team, helped plan the senior night.

“The other day, we were playing Hayfield and Annandale. They gave all of our seniors roses when it was their team’s senior night. We decided we should do the same thing,” Wang said.

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Justice’s team had an impressive league record of 14-0 and placed first in national districts, while Jefferson had a record of 2-2.

“The team that we played is a pretty tough team and impressed with how well our team played against [Justice, though]we made our fair share of mistakes. In the end, that equated us to beating ourselves in the absence of our mistakes. We won those games by a lot,” Bonnie Taylor, a PE teacher who supervised the game, said.

The first set had a score of 25-23, with Justice winning by a hair. The scores were tied throughout most of the set, but Justice ended up taking the win.

“Senior night volleyball game had all seniors on the team. It was a bit different than our usual starting lineups, because we had our seniors starting in; The first set started out really well. On the court, everyone there was so excited, we had a big crowd in the stands. Every time we won a point, we had so much energy,” Wang said.

It was a score of 25-20 for the second set. Once again, Justice won, but the game wasn’t over yet.

“We lost momentum in the second set because we were up in the first set, and then we ended up losing. I don’t think we had a lead at all in the second set. It just felt like we were playing catch up the whole set, and couldn’t push enough to take the lead,” Brodnik said.

In the final set, Jefferson lost 25-20. During the game, the scores were extremely close for each set.

“Generally our team does a pretty good job of being consistent, except in certain rotations where we lost momentum quickly. We [got] down by a lot in a row. We recovered a little bit, but it was too much of a deficit to come back from. In the future, we are working on strengthening our weakest rotations, and getting out a lot quicker,” senior Erin Brodnik said.

The team may have lost the game against Justice, but they will have another opportunity to win on Oct. 28 against John R. Lewis High School.

“I thought the game went really well with high intensity the whole time. Everyone on our team worked well together, and overall had a great time,” Brodnik said. “We might have lost, however, every set was close, and felt very competitive in the best way. It was a special night thanks to those that put together our memorable senior night.”