Granite Bay alumnus Travis Vincenzini joined the entirely renewed panel of coaches for girls volleyball this year as the varsity coach. Vincenzini played volleyball all four years at GBHS and went on to play NCAA DII volleyball at Alderson Broaddus University afterwards, ranking #1 in Digs Per Set in the 2014-15 season.

“I knew I had a passion for the sport and if I was not going to be playing, I wanted to be around the sport as much as I could,” Vincenzini said. “Coaching was a great option where I could utilize my skill, and knowledge of the game, and give back to the community.”

He could not continue to pursue his goal of post-collegiate volleyball due to injuries and two major surgeries. Despite the injuries, Vincenzini still had a passion for the game, and wanted to continue being around the sport in any way possible.

Vincenzini previously coached for boys Synergy Force, a competitive volleyball organization, and is also continuing to coach for the GBHS JV boys team in the spring.

With new coaches in freshman, JV, and varsity teams, the coaches are still learning the ins and outs of the program, but Vincenzini believes the RHS has “a strong group of girls.”

“I believe that Cindy Simon, the previous coach, had a very respectable program here and I would like to see that continue,” Vincenzini said.

Senior Jessica Donahue thinks that Vincenzini has done a great job running the program thus far, and has even noticed some parallels to last year.

“I like what he has done so far and you can definitely see some similarities to last year with Ms. Simon,” Donahue said. “It’s a lot of time drills and if you don’t get something done then we condition or have other punishments.”

Donahue also believes that the way that Vincenzini is handling the team’s relative inexperience has set them up to succeed this year.

“This year we have also done more skill drills because we lost so many seniors from last years team,” Donahue said. “And because of how many girls on this year’s team haven’t played club they haven’t had exposure to all of the skills that you can learn, and because of the way we are breaking it down at practice I think we’ll have a good year.”