PCHS Miners Boys Volleyball Team digs deep and highlights hits part way through the season

The seniors shown from the Miners Boys Volleyball Team. The bleachers will soon be getting updated and upgraded for a new facelift. Photo: TownLift // Michele Roepke

PARK CITY, Utah — The Park City High School boys volleyball team is mid-way through their season, and the leadership skills of the seniors are shining through, both on and off the court. That’s stands true of their varsity match on Tuesday at home against Murray High.

The five seniors on the team this year:

• Connor Richardson
• Mason Raffone
• Luke McNally
• Owen Wright
• Henry Skidmore

Skidmore has been on the team his entire high school athletic career. Two others have played for two years, and for one of them, this is his first year playing the sport on a competitive level. 

Murray High won the match, three sets in a row.

“All things considered, we played pretty well,” Head Coach Eric Damon told TownLift. “I’m relatively pleased with the results.”

Damon touched upon how this was the first competition after returning from spring break, with merely one practice. Their opponent is one of the better teams in the region. Before this game, the Miners were on a winning streak after a slow start to the season. “All in all, I’m pretty impressed with how we’ve improved over the season.”

Rather than taking the easy route, Damon intentionally schedules tournaments against the strongest teams in the state. As a result, he was proud of his team’s performance at a two-day tournament at Fremont High School north of the Salt Lake Valley, where a highlight came in a matchup against Hurricane High from Southern Utah. The Miners won two competitive sets in that contest.

Felix Waters is a junior on the Varsity Team. The middle-blocker has been playing for Park City for three years. He recollected to TownLift that one of the highlights of the season so far was a game against Jordan High School where “our energy was super high, we were hyped up, having fun, and played great as a team together.”

Outside-hitter on Varsity, J.B. Cronley has also been on the school’s squad since frosh, juggling his spot on the ice hockey team as well. He told TownLift, “Season’s going okay, we’re working hard, getting better, and taking wins where we can.”

Coach continues to grow the program and hopes parents keep volleyball top of mind when signing up boys in sixth through eighth grades for sports.

For now, though, he looks forward to five more matches this year over the next two weeks in the regular season. This weekend they play in a match to qualify for the state tournament, which is being held May 8-9 at Utah Valley University.