By Matt Stout
Staff Writer

Goffstown’s Courtney Selig, a senior tri-captain, blocks a Manchester Memorial hit during her team’s 3-2 loss on Friday, Oct. 6. (Goffstown News/Matt Stout)

With five regular-season games to go and every match proving more crucial than the last, a one-game, heart-breaking loss at home could derail some high school volleyball teams.

Yet, following his team’s 3-2 loss to Manchester Memorial on Friday, Oct. 6, Goffstown coach Matt Leonard was wearing a smile. His players, though dissatisfied, weren’t collapsing to the floor in disappointment.

The confidence and hope they’d worked so hard to build in the last week wouldn’t let them, nor would the knowledge that, despite the loss, their playoff chances remained as alive as ever.

At 2-10 entering a match-up with 3-9 Keene on Wednesday, Oct. 11, the Grizzlies have fought through their share of struggles this fall. They labored through a difficult early season schedule that pitted them against five top-10 Division I teams in their first six games.

After a win at Exeter on Sept. 20 ­ their first of the season ­ it didn’t get much easier with games against Nashua North and Bishop Guertin, the No. 3 and No. 2 teams in the standings, respectively, entering Wednesday, Oct. 11.

Yet, with their chances for a second-straight postseason berth dwindling, things brightened. A 3-0 loss against BG on Sept. 29 didn’t reflect how well Leonard thought his team played, and a 3-2 win at Trinity ­ an upstart team enjoying its best year in program history ­ re-instilled the self-assurance that Goffstown is indeed a playoff team.

“I think our confidence has been high enough the last week or so that we can bounce right back,” Leonard said, pegging games against Keene and Manchester Central as possible step-ladders into the postseason. “Before we just weren’t gelling as a team, but we’re getting that now. And I think it will prove it in the last couple weeks and hopefully in the playoffs that we’re a much better team than last year.”

Last season’s team finished at 4-12 to earn the No. 16 seed, but Goffstown, which if the season started today would be in again as the No. 16 team, isn’t settling for backing into the playoffs, Leonard said.

Players like senior captains Chelsea Audet and Courtney Selig have raised the Grizzlies’ play, even if their record doesn’t reflect it, while the two-setter combination of sophomore Livvy Smith and senior captain Sam Brown has given Leonard little reason to worry.

Three freshmen ­ Jackie Borror, Abby Riedel and Amelia Raymond ­ play consistently, along with several sophomores who swing between varsity and Goffstown’s improving JV squad ­ now playing .500 volleyball. But young players don’t necessarily mean a playoff-less season.

“We’re really good at letting the past go and moving forward with as much enthusiasm as we started out with,” said Audet, who played perhaps her best game against Memorial, Leonard said, with eight kills. “When we’re able to let go of our mistakes quickly and we talk, then we have an amazing game.”