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.
