Riverview volleyball has rare shot at a district title

Riverview volleyball coach Craig Wolfe doesn’t know for sure when the Rams last won a district title.

He asked Athletic Director Jay Lorenz, but the pair couldn’t find any solid info in the school’s athletic files. Wolfe knows for sure it has been more than a decade.

That search might not be so hard after this season. Under Wolfe’s tutelage, Riverview has become a contender.

It's a big move for a team that lost more matches than it won in 2014 when Wolfe was the junior varsity coach. He was able to observe some things at the varsity level he would change, if he was put in charge of the program.

The next season, Wolfe was promoted to varsity head coach and the team's fortunes changed, largely with the same core of players from the previous year. Then last season, the Rams lost just three matches, all to then-district rival Manatee. Riverview has moved up in class to 9A this season, leaving Manatee behind in 8A.

What changed over the course of one offseason? It’d be easy to point to Wolfe’s arrival as the turning point, but he gives credit to his players, saying they were the catalysts of their own culture change.

“The team was just more fragmented (in 2014),” Wolfe said. “There wasn’t that unity, that single sense of purpose. They had great players, but without that support from everybody, whether you’re on the bench, whether you’re a starter or a non-starter. That’s the thing that the players themselves really wanted to change, and it made it easier when I came in."

The winning culture carried into the current season. Riverview has five seniors, including two-season captain Samantha Norden, who has set the tone for her teammates.

Norden, the team’s libero, is not the loudest person, but she has a knack for spreading the right message at the right time, and people follow her lead.

Norden stays busy off the court, acting as the secretary of Riverview’s senior board, which plans everything from a movie night to the prom. She and the rest of the Rams also are active in the community. As part of a buddy program, members of the team head over to Phillippi Shores Elementary School and read with their personal buddy for an hour after school.

The 2016 Rams dropped two early-season tournament matches at Academy of the Holy Names, and have been dominant since.

“We did so well as a team (last year), and we didn’t know if we were going to be able to replicate that this year,” Norden said. “We knew we had the ability to, but we didn’t know whether all the pieces were going to come together.”

One sign of a team coming together? Singing in the locker room.

Sometimes it’s a song from “Pitch Perfect.” Other times, it’s a selection from “High School Musical,” “Hannah Montana” or another Disney teen classic. The team isn’t shy about dancing, either, occasionally on top of the bleachers.

The Rams are silly and always stays loose, and that’s just fine by Wolfe, a self-proclaimed "old school guy" who has learned to give his players the freedom to express themselves. He trusts his team to turn it on when it counts. It’s easy to trust a team with the recent success Riverview has seen.

That’s an amazing statement considering the shape of the program when Wolfe took over.

Riverview is overflowing with confidence and talent, and that might be just enough to end the school’s prolonged district title drought. That was the team’s goal coming into the season, and if they reach it, they could accomplish something far greater.

“I wouldn’t put anything past this group of girls,” Wolfe said, smiling.