By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
After coming within one point of advancing to last year’s Final Four, the motto for Jasper’s volleyball team this season is “One More.”
The Eagles led 24-19 in the deciding set against Galena in the Class 1 quarterfinal round, but it was the Bears who advanced––and that has provided more than enough motivation for a dominant Jasper squad.
Since that playoff loss, Jasper has only lost one match (to Pittsburg, Kansas) and has dropped a total of just three sets, including a 2-1 win against Marionville. On Thursday night in Liberal, the Eagles wrapped up a 30-1 regular season, bringing their record since the start of the 2023 season to an astounding 65-3-1.
The success all starts with an impressive six-member senior class.
“They’ve played together since third and fourth grade all the way up through junior high and high school and they know each other really, really well and they work incredibly hard,” said Jasper head coach Daniel Osborne. “They’ve worked on things like our serving––we get other teams out of system very quickly. Our hitting is just excellent. I have the best setter in all of Class 1. They jell, they play as a team and they’re united and that’s what makes them such a good team.”
The senior class that includes libero Addison Atnip, defensive specialists Alyssa Osborne and Nadia Morga and outside hitter Emersyn Bass also features all-state setter Shiloh Storm and two-time all-state selection Crystal Smith.
“I’ve got the No. 1 rated server in aces in Missouri right now with Aly Osborne,” Osborne said. “I’ve got one of the top hitters in Crystal Smith. I’ve got one of the top setters in the state in Shiloh Storm and I’ve also got one of the best liberos in the area in Addi Atnip, a great opposite hitter in Emersyn Bass and a girl who plays in the back row and is doing a great job her first year on varsity in Nadia Morga. They’re just a great group of girls.”
Smith, who has helped Jasper to 90 wins over the past three seasons, is perhaps the most prolific performer of the bunch. She led the list of area kill leaders last fall with 654––nearly 60 more than the player in second on the list, and well over 100 more than the player in third. And she was fourth in the area with 113 blocks. As a sophomore, she totaled 502 kills, 82 blocks, 269 digs and 68 aces.
Entering Thursday’s regular season finale, Smith was leading Jasper with 439 kills this season and 69 blocks. Smith and Storm, each with 59 serving aces, were tied for second on the roster behind Osborne’s 97. And Smith’s 182 digs were one off of Alivea Roberts’ team lead, and her 37 assists were second behind Storm’s 721; Storm recorded 1,133 last season.
“She just has a God-given natural ability,” Osborne said of Smith. “She sees the court well and she jumps like nobody else that I’ve ever seen. It looks like she jumps up in the air, freezes and then comes back down. I watch her in practice and I go, ‘Crystal, how do you do it?’ She says, ‘I just do it.’ If you watch her, she just hangs in the air. And then she’s got the power, unbelievable power. She takes out people with her hits. She follows the hitters on the other side really well and gets them down with blocks. She plays the back row extremely well, one of the best back row players in the state of Missouri, as well, and she could honestly be a setter if we need her to be a setter. She’s great at all six positions, any position we need her for.”
Smith, who holds school records for most kills and blocks in a game, said her favorite part is hitting.
“There are so many options I can do and it’s fun running different things because I can get to the other side of the court,” she said.
She tries to lead by example, and said, “people see what I can do and they want to look up to me but I also try to be really encouraging if I see my other middle struggling or outside’s or even our libero sometimes asks for help, so I can be vocal.”
That encouraging quality is shared by the whole senior class, she said.
“A lot of people look up to us so that’s a big thing and we show it on the court and even at school,” Smith said. “Just being nice people, boosting people up when they get down, telling them even if you make a mistake it’s not the end of the world, just go for the next point.”
Jasper got “One More” win on Thursday at Liberal and now turns its attention to the Class 1 District 11 tournament, in which the Eagles and Liberal are the top two seeds. Jasper will play the winner of Northeast Vernon County and Golden City on Oct. 28 in the district semifinals.
“We just knew we wanted to go higher than we were last year, make it further,” Smith said. “We knew that to do that we had to work hard, win as many games as we can and play as a team.”
“I think we’ll make it to state just by how we’ve been playing,” she said. “We’ve played a lot of the teams we’ll be seeing in the future and if we play as good as we have been with our serving, hitting, blocks, passing, coverage and all that, I think we’ll make it pretty far.”
“Whether it means one more point, one more hit, one more drill in practice, one more little bit of effort, whatever it is we need one more of to get us back to that quarterfinal,” Osborne said. “This year we’re not going to let that one point get us, we’re going to go win the quarterfinal and go to the Final Four.”
“We’ve got some great leaders, great talent and I think we’re coming together at the right time to make this work,” he said.
