On Saturday evening, members of the Craig eighth-grade AAU volleyball team sat down and had an enlightened talk.

“We were really tired, and we realized we had just played our whole middle school season twice,” Alisha Camp said. “We played something like 20 times Saturday.”

The team played in the AAU State Junior High Volleyball Championships in Fort Morgan. For it being in its first AAU tournament the team did well, finishing 10th out of 24 teams.

“We beat some teams we should have lost to and lost to a couple of teams we should have beat,” coach Sherman Romney said. “Overall, I was really proud of the girls.”

The team saw some competition that it wasn’t used to in seeing on the Western Slope.

“There was a girl from Colorado Springs who was 6-1,” said Gabby Miller, who won the team award for most serves in play.

The Bulldogs advanced from pool play Saturday into the second-tier of teams, which Romney called, “a difficult accomplishment.”

The Silver Division included Brush, Jefferson, San De Cristo, Fruita and Sterling. The Bulldogs finished better than Western Slope foe Fruita.

Romney started the team because of interest from the girls, but also to give some opportunities to play the sport after the school season.

The girls could see improvement after just one tournament.

“Sara (Kurz) had some blocks, and we didn’t do that during the season,” Camp said. “We didn’t play at the net during the middle school season.”

The development gave Rom–ney a vision to develop the program.

“We should do more to develop our players skills from fifth grade on,” he said. “The team that won the tournament had been playing together since fifth grade.”

Romney complimented all of his players for different aspects of their game, but he was the happiest with their attitude.

“I was really impressed with their efforts to be positive with each other and build each other up,” he said.To me, that is the most important thing an athlete can do on a team. team plays its best when everything is positive.”