KC looks to rebuild after year lost to pandemic

KIRTLAND, N.M.

The shortened 2020 volleyball season did not help the Kirtland Central team.

Like all squads statewide, the Lady Broncos played a month of volleyball this past spring as the season was delayed almost seven months due to the COVID-19 crisis.

“We’re really young in terms of playing years,” KC coach Nadia Begay-Watson said. “I have four seniors that played only one month of volleyball last year so we missed a whole season of maturity.”

The four seniors returning from last season’s abbreviated season include Adriona Nargo, Malyha Benally, Talyssa Dowdy and Andrea Thomas.

The aforementioned players were sophomores during the 2019 season when the Broncos finished the year at 14-6 overall and 8-2 in District 1-4A on a squad that featured seven seniors.

Begay-Watson was hoping to groom those players last season but with the season cut to roughly six weeks there was very little time for them to grow.

Nevertheless, the KC coach was ecstatic to get the new season going as the Broncos split the first two games last week.

Last Thursday, the Kirtland Central squad defeated Navajo Prep in straight sets. The scores were 25-23, 25-16 and 25-12 at home.

“We had a full crowd tonight and last year it wasn’t like that,” Watson-Begay said. “We just limited it to parents only so it was really nice to see a bunch of people here that I haven’t seen in a while.

“I’m just glad that they’re having a season,” she said.

Following that match, the Broncos traveled to Espanola Valley on Saturday as they went the distance with the Lady Sundevils. The set scores were 23-25, 25-22, 18-25, 27-25, 15-13 in favor of Espanola Valley.

Against Prep, the Broncos finished with 18 kills and 21 aces to end the match in a little over an hour with Nargo putting down eight kills and serving across six aces.

“She’s a real good one to watch,” the KC coach said of Nargo.

In addition to her senior middle hitter, Watson-Begay said Benally is just as effective on the outside.

“She’s really tough too,” she said.

In last Thursday’s win, the Broncos also got a productive outing from Dowdy as she led the team with eight service aces while Thomas added four.

“That’s stuff that we can control,” Begay-Watson said of the teams’ aces. “We practice the serve and that’s just an easy point for us if we’re able to have tough serves.”

In addition to getting Navajo Prep out of system with their tough serves, the KC coach said they made some adjustments to slow down Navajo Prep sophomore Aniya Johnson.

“We made some adjustments to try and shut her down,” she said. “In the second and third set, she had a real hard time getting the ball down, which is good on our part. Just things like that is what we need to do this season. We have to make adjustments and grow each game.”

This season the KC squad will be playing in a couple of regular season tournaments, starting with the PV/Farmington Invite on Sept. 3 and 4.

The Broncos will also play in the Sandia Prep tournament in Albuquerque next month.

The nondistrict slate of games includes matches with Farmington (today), Thoreau (Saturday), Grants (Sept. 7), Dulce (Sept. 11), Montezuma-Cortez (Sept. 16) and Piedra Vista (Sept. 21).

Those matches, Begay-Watson said, will help them prepare for their district rivals as District 1-4A consists of Aztec, Bloomfield, Gallup, Kirtland Central, Miyamura and Shiprock.

“Our district is going to be really tough,” she said. “Gallup is bringing back a lot of their kids. They won the district last year. Miyamura is going to be tough and Aztec is really looking good too. We got a really tough district this year so it’s going to be really interesting.”

As for team goals, Begay-Watson said she wants her kids to continue to progress even though they’re rebuilding.

“I just want for our kids to go out there and compete in every single game,” she said. “I want them to grow, and just have a lot of fun while they’re doing that.”

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