Five games remain in the 2015 regular season for the Leopard volleyball team, and with the playoffs quickly approaching, the team is looking to pull out the top seed in the district to get an advantage in the post-season.

On Tuesday, Oct. 20, the Leopards traveled north to Grayson County to take on the Denison Yellow Jackets.

“Denison is a good match for us, because it gives us an opportunity to get some kids on the court,” head volleyball coach Jason Nicholson said. “Obviously any time we play Denison and Sherman they’re not fortunate to have the talent level that we do. They give us a competitive match, but it gives me the chance to get some kids some reps who aren’t usually getting reps against a McKinney or a Prosper.”

Soon after taking care of Denison in a clean sweep, the Leopards quickly shifted their focus to today’s match-up against a Prosper team, currently undefeated in district 10-5A, in hopes of avenging a loss earlier in the year.

“We didn’t play well at their place,” Nicholson said. “Hopefully we are able to get a good crowd. Anytime we get our crowd to step it up it seems like we get our girls to play a little bit better, so I think that will be huge for us as we get as we get a good home match with them.”

The game features a key matchup in the middle with Prosper’s Ashtyn Richey (SMU commit) on one side of the net, and the Leopards’ Sarah Langs (TCU commit) on the other side.

Although they did not play up to their potential the last time around against Prosper, Nicholson said he believes that the Leopards will “have an advantage on the outside” with juniors Haley Deschenes on one side and Callie Holden on the other.

“Our outsides have not played very well against them,” Nicholson said. “I feel like this is a big game for them to really bring all of the pieces together and kind of come out and put on a show for everybody.”

Another area Nicholson said the Leopards will be able to take advantage of is the outside blocking.

“It’s not substantial; it’s decent and I feel like that is an area that we can expose, and we really didn’t do a good job of that the first time we played,” Nicholson said.

In preparation for the matchup, the Leopards have changed a few things up in practice.

“In practice all week we have been focusing on, one, winning the serve and serve-receive game which I think we did well in the last game, and also we have also changed where we set our base up,” senior Jordan Fate said.

An injured thumb on junior Morgan Seidl has caused the personnel on the court to change as well.

“We’ve got a couple seniors who are going to step in,” Nicholson said. “Missing Morgan is going to hurt our serve-receive a little bit. She is one of our best, if not our best, passer. So everybody knows they kind of have to step their game up a little bit.”