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The second match of the night was against NT Catholic and this was our stiffest test yet of the season although we went on to prevail, this was the first loss for NT Catholic this season.  Their team volleys well and makes it tough to get the point if you dont' hit it back firmly at them most of the time.

In the first game, Spenser H. led the team and started off with his first 10 serves for point and 6 were not returned.  Jake C. had 3 and Marc G. also had 4 serves in for this game and we only missed on 1 serve the entire game.  We were led in passing by Jake C. with 11, Mike S. with 9 and Peter J. with 5 good.  Hitting was led by Mike P. with 6 of which 2 were kills and Marc. G. with 4.  We did however hit 2 streches were we did not side-out the team and gave up a 7 and 4 point run which put us tied at 19 after each teams first 5 servers.  We also did not protect 4 of our first 6 servers with each placing a good serve in although we lost the point and showed over 11 passing / hitting errors this game.  We won this game 25  - 22 in the end.

In the second game, our serving and hitting prevailed.  Jake C. got us a lead with 4 good serves and the team supported him with solid passing and hitting.  Marc G. dominated with his serve placing the next  14 in a row in with 8 of them unreturned before missing one!  Jake C. led the team with 6 passes followed by Marc. G. and Alex H. with 5 each.  We had our best hitting game of the season set up by leading setting with 4 for Mike S. and 3 for Jake C.  Mike P. led hitting with 6, 4 of those for kill and put several of these down on single hits by attacking a volley coming over the net.  Alex. H. had 5 hits, 2 for kill and Marc. G had 3 hits with 1 for kill.  A much improved performance for a 25 - 7 win this game.

In the third game, we lost in a good effort, 19 - 25.  Serving was led by Mike K. with 4 followed by Wyatt W. and Anthony B. with 3 each.  Passing was led by Mike K. with 9 and Anthony B. with 7 good ones.  Setting was led by Mike K. with 5 and Anthony B. with 3. Hitting was led by both Wyatt W. with 3, 2 for kill and Austin K. with 3, 1 for kill.  The boys volleyed hard and came close on this one.

Statistics for this match are found here.

We now have (2) matches under our belt and the boys performed very well.  In the first game which we won, Spenser H. opened up with 16 consecutive serves in before missing and 10 of those were aces!  Jake C. had 4 and Marc G. had 3 to finish the match, while neither of them missed a serve.  Jake C. led the team with 5 passes while Mark G. had 3 passes while Alex H. had 2 and several others with one.  Marc G. led the team with 3 hits, 2 of those for kill.  Jake C. led the setting with 3 sets.

In the second game we won again with Wyatt W. leading the team with 7 serves, 6 of those for aces while Alex. H. had 4 ace serves and Spenser H. had 4 more serves in.  Michael S. led the team with 6 passes, Mike K. had 6 passes while Anthony B., Alex H. and Spenser H. all had 3 good passes.  Wyatt W. led the hitting with 3 hits while Alex H. and Peter J. each had 2 hits.  Michael S. led the setting with 3 sets while Mike K. added 2 sets.

We also won the third game and Peter J.  and Jake C. both led the serving with 6 good serves each, while Anthony B. contributed 5 serves and Jake L. had 3.  Passing was led by Jake C. with 5 passes followed by Rob D. and Wyatt W. both with 3 passes each.  Rob D. also had the only successful hit of this game, way to go Rob!  Setting was led by Jake C. with 2 sets.

It truly was a team effort as there was very little drop off when we started substituting right away in the start of the second game.  I'm proud of the fact that as a team we only missed 6 serves all day!  That can be a winning formula if we can keep that type of serving up as some of these guys can hit ball pretty hard and/or low and effectively.  I expect the level of competition to pick up next Monday when we have a double-header at home.  The stats for today's match are found by clicking here.