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The Finals for the Diocesan Championship became an epic battle before St. Peter & Paul A, the Lombardo Division Season Champion, went on to win the match in the third game.  Both teams played a phenominal match and both at times dominated the other.

In the first game we lost 25-20 on a back and forth game all the way.  After 3 servers each, we were leading 6-3.  After 6 servers each we were leading 12-11.  After 9 servers each it was tied 17-17!  As you can see it was tough all the way.  In fact after 12 servers we were down 20-22 and then they made the next 3 points.  We were led in serving by Spenser H. with 5 and Alex H. with 3.  We dominated the hitting again with Mike P. with 12 hits and 4 of those for kill and Marc G. with 4 hits and 1 for kill.  Give St. Peter & Paul credit, they dug out more of those hits than any other team and that is why the kills had dropped and they won the first game.

In the second game it was more of the same although we only missed 1 serve the entire game and seemed to put them on the defensive more often with our serve, but it was still very close all the way.  After 3 servers each we were up 10-6.  After 6 servers each we were up 16-13 and after 9 servers each it was 22-22!  We then made the next 3 serves and points to win this game.  Again, we dominated the nets in hitting and were led by Mike P. with 12 hits and 5 of those for kill followed by Marc G. with 8 hits and 5 of those for kills!  Serving was led by Marc G. with 7 and 2 for ace followed by Jake C. with 5 and both Mike P. and Alex H. with 4.  The boys hung in there and passed well and set equally well in order to make all of those hits.

In the third game, which was ultimately a heart-breaking game for the team, St. Peter and Paul stepped up and had some answers for our hitting game and made several key blocks as well as they hit the ball back at us better than we had seen most of the season.  We did have a good lead after 4 servers each of 7-4 although we had trouble with their 5th server.  Not so much his serving, but that is were they made some good net plays and blocked several of our hits as well as they made several key hits at us and eventually ran off 10 points in a row.  We lost this game 15-9 although the boys played hard.  Serving was even although Jake C. did lead with 3 good ones.  We sided out each of their first 4 servers on their first serve whereas we made points of our #2, #3 and #4 servers.  Hitting was led by Mike P. with 5 and 1 of those was for kill.  Give St. Peter & Paul much credit for hanging in there when down and playing a good game to win.

The boys came out and played 2 very nice matches to take both their Pre-Quarter and the Quarter Finals matches and advance to the Semi-Finals on Thursday night this week.

In the first match, the team won against St. Ambrose and all of the boys managed to see action on the court.  We had strong hitting from the starters followed up by solid play by every boy that came in to take the team through the first match.  We were led for the match in serving by Marc G. with 12 good and 4 of those for ace followed by Mike S. with 6 good and 3 for ace.  Passing were were led by both Mike S. and Austin K. both with 12 and setting by Mike S. with 15 sets.  Hitting was led by Marc G. with 10 and 2 of those for kill, Mike P. with 9 and 5 of them for kill and Wyatt W. with 7 and 2 of those for kill.  Statistics for this match are found here.

In the second match against Sacred Heart #1 we won 25-15 and the team played extremely well together and did a superb job of passing the balls to the setters.  The setters, Alex H. and Mike S. did a great job of getting us into hitting positions and Mike P. and Marc G. did a solid job of hitting the ball for points and Wyatt W. made some nice net plays.  In the second game in particular our serving was again a strength and we put that game away in good fashion.  Jake C. and Spenser H. both had great serving to help bring home this match.  In the first game, Marc G. got us started by getting points on his first 9 serves and led serving that game followed by Alex H. with 7.  Setting in game 1 was led by Mike S. with 10.  Passing was led by Peter J. with 7 and Jake C. with 6.  Hitting was led by Mike P. with a dominating performance of 11 hits of which 6 went for kill followed by Marc G. with 8 and 3 of those for kill.

In the second game against Sacred Heart #1 we won 25-4 and it seemed that we could do almost no wrong.  Jake C. led us in serving with 9 good ones followed by Spenser H. who took us out with 4 good ones but 3 were un-returned for ace.  We only used 5 servers this game.  Setting was led by Alex H. with 5 and passing was weak as we dominated the volleys and we were led by Mike S. and Jake C. both with 3 each.  Hitting was dominated by Mike P. again with 7 and 2 for kill followed by Alex H. who hit 3 and 2 for kill on volley attacks at the net.  Statistics for this match are found here.

We will return Thursday at 5pm to play a Semi-Final match against St. Andrews #1 and the winner will move into the Finals match for the league championship.  The boys need to continue to play solid team ball which will give them a good opportunity to advance.