Burton steps up as new volleyball coach
By Steve Wimmer
The HCHS volleyball team began their 2024 season this week and Janna Burton has taken over as the team’s head coach.
Burton has coached middle school volleyball since 2021 and helped out with the high school team last year. She stepped in to lead the team after head coach Bailey Weikel stepped down during the season last year.
The school struggled to find a new head coach this year and Burton stepped up to take the job.
“This year nobody stepped up and they weren’t going to be able to have a program so I figured I might as well. These girls love volleyball and I love it as much as they do, so I wanted them to get their chance,” Burton said.
Burton, a math teacher at HCMS, played for the Lady Hornets volleyball team when she was in school at HCHS.
“I was on the first high school volleyball team at Hancock County. I played for three years from 2002 to 2004. That was back before the libero even existed, so things are a little different now,” she said.
Hancock County won just two of 23 matches last year and were 8-22 under coach Weikel in 2022. The new head coach likes the players she has this year and believes they will play hard for her.
“I hope we’ll be better than last year. I have a good group of girls. They’re all friends and they all work together. I’ve met with all of them individually and that was something I felt I needed to do. We talked about goals and things that we want to work on. Our team motto this year is going to be ‘resilience’.
Burton said that last year’s team did not have that.
“When one bad thing happened last year everybody shut down. They felt like, hey it’s over we’re going to lose. That’s something we’ve discussed this year that no matter what happens, if we’re losing by 20 or winning by 20, we’re going to play on the level that we know we can play.”
Samara Heflin has come in an will be Burton’s assistant coach.
“She’s going to be good. She played in high school a few years after me.”
There are 24 girls on the high school roster and they plan to play a complete freshman, junior varsity and varsity schedule. There are six seniors and three juniors. The rest are all underclassmen.
“I won’t say that we’re going to be competitive on the state level, but we’re going to be competitive locally,” Burton said
