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Chambers Academy held volleyball tryouts on Monday under first year head coach Morgan Pepper.

Chambers had 33 girls try out for the team, but only 24 of them will make the cut. Twelve of the girls will be on the varsity team, and the other 12 will be on the JV team.

Pepper brought on some help from Madison Harrell to be the assistant coach.

“We split it up into three different groups,” Harrell said. “We had offense, defense and serving. We ran different drills for the different categories. If we were doing offense, we did hitting lines. If we did defense, we would be receiving hitting lines.”

Harrell is spending her first year in any coaching capacity, and she graduated from Wicksburg High School in Newton, Alabama last year.

Harrell and Pepper described what they were looking for in these girls.

“We’re looking for attitude and communication,” Harrell said. “I would like to have a coachable player as opposed to all skill and talent. I was looking for the ones who were listening to me and at least trying to change their mistakes.”

“We don’t want anybody that’s going to have a bad attitude,” Pepper said. “A lot of these girls are used to playing. They haven’t had a strict tryout before. We decided we didn’t want to do that. We wanted girls that we could spend time with and coach them. We want them to have a good attitude and help us win.”

The decision of who will make the roster will be a challenge for Pepper.

“It’s going to be a tough decision,” Pepper said. “We had quite a few girls come out. It’s going to be hard trying to pick who’s going to be the best fit for us.”

As for the girls who don’t make it, Pepper encourages them to keep working.

“Keep your head up. Keep working,” Pepper said.

Pepper will make the decision on who makes the team by the end of the week. They will start official team practices on Monday.