The Vicksburg High volleyball team has played its way to an historic season. The Missy Gators went from not winning a single set in the first four years of the program’s history, to now having a 6-6 overall record and being .500 in Class II, Division 5.

It’s been a long, hard process for coach Aimee Scribner and her team to get to their season of firsts. They won their first three games against Canton 3-1, and swept Yazoo County 2-0 and 3-0 in a doubleheader. They’ll finish the season Thursday night with a match at Clinton.

Senior Jade Douglas reflected on the team’s first victory and the emotions she felt in the moment.

“It was really good because we’re not used to winning,” Douglas said. “It opened up a lot of doors, like now we’re about to win a lot more games.”

The Missy Gators’ first victory was against a young Canton team. Although they were excited to compete against an opponent that had similar skills, Elishia Howard had to remind her teammates to not underestimate anyone.

“I think we went in confident and came out as winners,” Howard said.

For Howard, Douglas and Destiny Allen, making history on the volleyball court has been an added benefit to their emotional senior year, and they remember moments in the season that stood out the most.

Douglas’ favorite moment was having an intense spike at an away game and just being recognized in the paper with her best friends. Allen remembers having 12 aces against Yazoo County and Howard cherishes the time she brought the heat with her serve against Provine earlier in the season.

“They’ve kept going this entire season. They could’ve easily quit after that first game. These girls have worked super hard this whole year,” Scribner said. “There’s been a lot of hard times, a lot of good times and a lot of sad times.”

Scribner took over the program two years ago and told the team they would win matches before they graduated. They just had to believe in what she was telling them.

The Missy Gators have accomplished everything they have on their own, Scribner just showed them how to get over the hump and win.

Among the changes Scribner has made to the program, getting the players to change their attitude was the biggest one.

“Don’t quit is all I tell them. It’s tough whenever you don’t have a winning season since you started. They didn’t know how to win and they basically quit every time they played,” Scribner said. “That was basically our motto, ‘don’t quit and work for it.’”

In addition to changing her players’ attitudes, she was able to remove the phrase “I can’t” from their vocabulary.

“They know that they can’t say the word ‘I can’t’ anymore because they’ve proved to themselves and me that they can,” Scribner said.

Aside from winning, the Missy Gators were able to compete with top teams in Jackson and surrounding areas.

They’ve played Lanier twice, splitting the matches with a 3-0 win and a 3-0 loss, and only dropped a set in each of their two meetings against Provine. However, the team ran into a brick wall against division foe Germantown and lost both matches.

Scribner always mentioned how proud she is of her team and the most proud she’s ever been was the first game at Canton, which was the first win in the program’s history.

“Watching them grow is really impressive and makes me very happy emotionally to see that these girls believe in what I’m telling them,” Scribner said.