The graduation of six team members who saw regular playing time last fall hasn’t prevented Tom Czaplinski, coach of the Newtown High School girls’ volleyball team, from maintaining his always-high expectations: To improve upon the previous year’s record and again be in the hunt to win South-West Conference and state titles, if not win one or both of those championships.

Pressed into the need to rely on some new faces to step up and play key roles, Newtown has a path to success that certainly doesn’t look like an easy one from the outside. But Czaplinski has high hopes — and confidence in his team.

“I think it’s a very reasonable goal. I think we have a good core coming back that got some experience last year,” said Czaplinski, while watching his team practice during preseason preparations in the school gymnasium last week.

The Nighthawks will have to come together rather quickly to do better than their 15-4 regular-season mark in 2013, and will need some tremendous postseason success to match or surpass last season’s playoff runs.

A year ago, the team advanced to the SWC championship match and fell to its unbeaten rivals from Joel Barlow in Redding. The No. 10 seed in the Class LL state tournament, Newtown won its state bracket opener, over No. 23 Brien McMahon of Norwalk, but fell to seventh-seeded Simsbury in the second round.

The postseason is only a little more than a month away in the truncated fall season, but there’s a long way to go — in terms of match play, practices, learning, and developing, and Czaplinski acknowledges that it may take a little time for the pieces to fall into place with his new-look squad.

“The beginning’s going to be a little rough for us,” says the coach, adding that a combination of sorting out specific roles for players and a challenging schedule will make the start a potentially bumpy ride.

Czaplinski had a strong group of players a year ago — “It was a great group; we had a lot of fun,” he notes — but he’s looking for even more out of this year’s lineup.

“We’re hoping we can get that killer instinct we lacked a little of last year,” the coach said.

The Nighthawks have one captain, senior Kyle Dandrea, who is an outside hitter. Other seniors whom Czaplinski is looking to have play significant parts in the team’s success are middle hitters Clara Whaley and Alexa Reilly, and libero Tonya Tucker.

“We have some experience coming back,” the coach said.

As the preseason wound down this past week, Czaplinski noted that areas that will need improvement are passing and communication.

“I think our serving and our hitting are going to be our strengths,” the coach added.

Newtown was scheduled to open the regular season against a tough nonconference team, Woodstock Academy, on September 10. Following a visit to New Fairfield the next day, the Hawks are slated to go to Barlow for a September 15 clash at 5 pm.

Czaplinski expects tough competition from Weston (a team Newtown is not scheduled to face until October 6), Barlow (whom the Hawks have a rematch against on October 17), Masuk of Monroe and an improved Brookfield squad (teams NHS tangles with in back-to-back home matches, September 29 and October 1, respectively), along with Bunnell of Stratford (which Newtown visits on September 17).

Upcoming home matches include a Friday, September 19, visit from Bethel (5 pm) and a Monday, September 22, date with New Milford (6:30 pm).