Thursday, starts the third season of volleyball for the Pleasant Home Lady Eagles, and coach Jerry Davis said he is looking forward to what the season will bring.

“We feel like we’re going to be competitive (this year),” Davis said. “It’s just going to take a while for the younger girls — they’ve been playing — it’s just a matter of going out there and seeing the different competition.”

When PHS started its first volleyball program in 2008, the Lady Eagles made it to the regional tournament, where they fell to Class 1A powerhouse Kinston.

Last season, the Lady Eagles only won seven matches.

Davis said since the 2008 season he has learned a lot more about the game.

This year, the Lady Eagles have two returning starters on the team in senior Kaitlin Brookshire and junior Kendra Bryan.

The other varsity players on the team are junior Chelsea Walker; and sophomores, Emily Byrd, Ashley Copeland, Taylor Godwin, Caitlin Jernigan, Abigail Kelley, Jordan McGhee, Kim Reed, Courtney Slaughter and Raven Woods.

To help lead the younger girls this year is Brookshire, who said her expectations this season primarily rely on how the younger girls will play.

“We have a lot of new players this year, but they’ve been playing since seventh grade,” she said. “After we had our summer bash in Flomaton — it went really well after not having practice — it just showed us how much potential we have for the year.

“We lost one of our 10th graders (Copeland to a knee injury) who was a good hitter, but we still have a bunch of people,” she said. “They’ve really blended well over the last few years. I expect us to do fairly well this year.”

In area play, the Lady Eagles will be in Class 1A, Area 2 with Kinston and Florala.

“The area is Kinston,” Davis said. “Kinston is one of the better ones in the state of Alabama regardless. We played in the regionals last year, and we we lost three and won one. Two of the matches we lost were in extra points.

“We were right there on the verge of going to the sub-regionals,” he said.

As far as team goals, Brookshire said the girls have a good chance to make it past the regional tournament.

“I know we’re going to make it to regionals, hopefully if we can get past Florala,” Brookshire said. “I definitely see us making it past regionals. Once the season starts, people are going to see how much we’ve improved in the past year, and how far we can make it. We’ll have more fans, too. People should come out and support us.”