Bethany Bentz, right, the new varsity volleyball head coach at Marysville High School, watches a drill during the school’s recent youth camp. Bentz, who previously was a Lady Monarch assistant coach, takes over the program from Randy Cline.
(Journal-Tribune photo by Tim Miller)
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Bethany Bentz is getting pretty good vibes from the Marysville High School volleyball program.
“The excitement is building,” she said prior to the start of the school’s youth camp, which was held earlier this week.
Bentz will begin preseason practices next week for her first season as the Lady Monarch varsity head coach. She was elevated to the top position from her previous duties as an assistant coach after the resignation of Randy Cline last spring.
“The girls are creating goals for themselves through their preseason conditioning,” said Bentz. “We are also working hard to create a family-unity atmosphere within the program.”
The Lady Monarch program has ebbed and flowed over the past decade or so. A large part of that, said Bentz, is because of numerous coaching changes.
“We have had several head coaches come and go,” she said. “That lack of continuity can cause a program to ebb and flow.”
Bentz feels the team is back into a flowing type of stage.
“I think our future is bright, but we have to work hard,” she said. “We want to create an atmosphere of intense competition and build a unified passion for the game.”
The building of any high school sports program begins on the younger levels. The recently-completed camp attracted 50 youngsters in grades 3-8. That nearly doubled the number of participants from previous years’ sessions.
The numbers for the high school program are also good.
“We will field three full teams (varsity, junior varsity and freshman) this fall,” said Bentz. “That is very exciting.”
For the past several years, the Lady Monarchs have finished in the middle of the pack in the Ohio Capital Conference Central Division.
While some may view that as consistency, Bentz wants to see that trend take an upward turn.
“We want to build a program that is competitive in the OCC,” she said. “We’ve usually placed fourth, but we want to form a team that can compete for the top three places in the division.”
There are three very talented programs that have stood in the way of the Lady Monarchs in their quest for an upper-echelon finish within the division.
“Dublin Coffman always has a state tournament-caliber program,” said Bentz. “Upper Arlington and Hilliard Davidson have also had very strong teams over the years.
“We play each of those teams twice a season,” she said, “and about the only way to describe those matches is that they are like running a gauntlet.
“We have to ramp up our intensity if we want to successfully run that gauntlet during the upcoming season,” said Bentz.