The Lady Hilltoppers will face off versus the Union Farmers on their home opener on the 8th and will travel to Rahway to face the Indians on the 9th for their first 2 regular season games.
Both JV and Varsity are looking at tough tests this early on as both Union and Rahway gave both squads all they could handle last year. JV split with Union and went 2W-1L with Rahway and played 3 of the 5 matches to 3 games. Varsity dropped both matches in 2 games to Union (25-8/25-21 and 25-15/25-8) and split with Rahway (25-21/25-16 and 25-23/20-25/25-21), winning their match on the road in 3 sets at the end of the season.
Against Union, Summit managed only 20 kills in 4 games. That production must improve drastically for the team to experience success against the Farmers. Over the last 2 years, SHS has gone 1W-3L against Union, its only win in 2014, a 3 set victory at home (25-11/17-25/25-19). Summit gave up only 7 aces while hitting for 18 kills and 13 aces. Captain Margot Reigle had a season and career high 8 kills for the match and hit for an amazing .533 kill % and a .333 hitting % to lead Summit to a victory.
Against Rahway, SHS has gone 2W-2L over the last 2 years with 3 of the 4 matches going 3 games. Last year, Summit was out-killed 15-11, out-aced 8-3 and out-blocked 6-1 in their 2 game loss at home. In their 3 game win at Rahway, Summit had a 29-19 edge in kills and a 10-3 edge in aces despite being edged heavily in digs 70-44 but it also reflected the advantage the team had in offensive production. Captains Casey Nardino and Val Guzman had 16 of the team's kills (8 apiece) last year in the 3 game win.
The early portion of the season continues with ALJ at home on the 12th, Linden away on the 13th and New Providence at home on the 16th to round out week 2. ALJ took care of Summit 2-1 (25-23/21-25/21-25) in last year's match-up. Summit beat Linden 2-1 away (25-22/21-25/25-20) but lost 2-1 at home (23-25/25-18/16-25) later in the season and lost twice in 2 games versus New Providence (10-25/20-25 and 9-25/17-25).
In 2015, Summit eclipsed 20 kills 7 times and came away with a 4W-3L record with only 1 of those matches being a 2 game match (Roselle Catholic - 24 kills). More importantly, the Hilltoppers earned 3 Wins to only 1 Loss if the squad hit the 9 kill per game mark. In addition, Summit had a 5W - 1L record when hitting for more than 10 aces in a match and had an ace % of over 20%. Summit's success over the first 5 matches will spell out the potential success the 2016 Hilltoppers will attain this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment