Franklinton High School played its first season of volleyball this past school year and is looking take bigger strides this year.

Monday through Thursday, the club participated in a team camp, which was run by Ponchatoula coach Frank Pal.

“It’s just like anywhere I go, I’ll start with the basic stuff. Keep it as simple as possible,” Pal said. “I think the main thing is coaching and teaching the culture of volleyball.”

Pal said once you get the technique down and you start understanding the game, you start to win.

Pal said he’s got the girls working mainly on serving and passing.

“Hitting’s going to be the last thing I do,” Pal said.

At the camp Wednesday, Pal said he was concentrating on keeping it simple with serving and passing. After that, the girls were broken up into teams and scrimmaged against each other.

During the scrimmage, they worked on those skills, but also how to rotate in and out and transitioning from offense to defense.

When asked how much the Lady Demons had improved since Monday, Pal simply said, “100 percent.”

Haley Sanford, who will be a senior in the upcoming year, was playing volleyball for the first year ever last season.

She said they didn’t do well last year, but kind of got the hang of it.

“This year, we’re actually going to be competing for district,” Sanford said. “With him helping us, I think it’s going to help us get the real basics of volleyball down and just get the basics and fundamentals down and then we can move on to other things.”

Sanford, who was a setter last year, said she thinks she’ll be playing middle back this season. She said some of the things she’s seen improvement on with the team have been serving and fundamentals.

She also said that communicating is another thing they are working on.

Sanford said her game has probably improved a lot since last year.

“I’m just learning new things,” Sanford said. “I’m learning how to get my fundamentals down really good.”

Franklinton coach Leslie McGhee, whose team went 7-5 last year, said the biggest improvement has been in their rotation.

“Frank said he saw a lot of people that know where they were going,” McGhee said. “Last year, that was so new to us where we were moving and transitioning from offense to defense was very very hard for us because it’s just the different rotations when you’re playing in a 6-2 and all.”

McGhee added that she has some girls that have improved their hitting technique too.

Franklinton opens the season Sept. 2 with a road match against Varnado. The first serve is scheduled for 4 p.m.