Long time Grants High School Volleyball assistant coach as well as multi-sport coach, Joaquin Jiron, has taken the head coach position for the Lady Pirates volleyball team. Jiron, who has been a volleyball assistant on-and-off since 2002 said, “I’m grateful for the opportunity.”
Jiron’s coaching philosophy is for him and his staff to make players better people through sports.
“We want them to be better citizens when they are out of school,” said Jiron.
As far as practice is concerned, “We use plyometrics and are moving away from free weights,” said Jiron. “We also go over our attack and time our drills to have a complete and structured 90minute practice.”
Jiron and his staff have a young team to mold and develop, with four freshman starters mixed in with sophomores and juniors. The team only fields two seniors this year, Delilah Martinez and Chardazcha McNiell.
Jiron is content with his schedule this year, and has fine-tuned it to feature mostly 4A schools, a top 3A school, and Cottonwood Classic whom they played last week.
On Tuesday, August 19 the Lady Pirates hosted Bloomfield and lost 3-2, making the set go the maximum five sets, (2125, 25-23, 21-25, 25-22, 15-11).
“We made small mistakes that cost us the game,” said Jiron of the season opener.
On August 21 they lost 3-1 (19-25, 21-25, 2725, 9-25) to Cottonwood Classical Prep (1-0) who was a final four contender last season in 3A.
“We had our setter, Desire McNiell, out with an injury and the team had to adjust to that,” said Jiron of the four-set matchup.
The Lady Pirates are 2-0 heading into a home game with Miyamura high school (0-0) on Tuesday, August 26.
“It will be competitive, we had success with them this summer and they are going to bring it, it should be good,” said Jiron of the matchup with Miyamura.