9th Graders Open Up with a Bang
The Hilltoppers faced off against the New Providence Pioneers across all three levels at Summit this past Friday and came away with 8/9 sets won. The Maroon and White were solid across the service line and had the benefit of the struggles of the Pioneers in serving to cap off a solid 3-0 victory versus the Green and White at the 9th grade level.
Although the opening victory in the scrimmage was rightfully celebrated, the squad will need to improve its serve receive and transition offense as they step up in competition this season. As with any young squad, developing consistency will be the main goal even in this curtailed season.
Junior Varsity Offense Pressures New Prov Into a Loss
The Junior Varsity squad is ladened with experienced club players and added a core of sophomores who have made the depth of the team the best its been in recent memory. The addition of some junior and 9th grade athletes to the mix has also helped in ensuring the long term success of the squad. The match itself featured many long rallies that went the way of the Hilltoppers because, although New Providence showed great defensive prowess, the Maroon and White attack was relentless and kept the pressure up throughout the sets. Summit took the 3 sets from New Providence in convincing fashion and the offense and serving of the Hilltoppers looks to be a major strength of the squad. Can the team be more consistent from the service line and not have spurts of 2-3 consecutive misses? Can the Hilltoppers eliminate some of the offensive unforced errors in out of system play? And can the serve receive handle a more potent serving attack? These are the questions left to be answered for the JV Squad in this shortened season. Questions that will also reveal the answer to the essential question, what is the Fall 2021 Team look like?
Varsity Dominates with Offense to Take the First, Gives Away the Second and Rebounds in Third
The Varsity Lady Hilltoppers began the scrimmage asupiciously with 2/3 misses from the service line but the team settled down and hit for 13 kills and 5 aces in Set 1 to take the opening stanza 25-11. Set 2 saw the Hilltoppers hit 6 service errors and 9 unforced hitting errors to spot New Prov 15 points. Despite that stat, the team only dropped the set by a 25-20 score, outscoring New Prov 13-10.
The team played without its Libero, Captain Kiera Stocks, and a couple of other Set 1 starters in the final set and the team passed far better and made better decisions out of system to take the third set comfortably. Once again, the offense played a major part in the win as the Hilltpoppers hit for 10 kills and 4 aces and added 3 blocks from the defensive side to notch 17 points. New Prov was unable to match the point output of the Maroon and White which proved to be the decisive factor.
The team was selected as one of the teams to watch in the Union County Conference for this season and based on the offensive indications thus far, the potential is there for this to be a special season. But the team has to eliminate its unforced errors out of system as one of its strengths is its blocking presence and defense which are negated if there are a lot of hitting errors. The team can clearly serve very effectively and will score points with that approach but it will give up some points in that aggressive posture which makes it more vital to make better decisions with the ball when they are out of system.
The 9th Graders will host New Providence on Tuesday while the Var and JV will travel to the Pioneers. Oak Knoll will visit the Summit gym on Wednesday for the Varsity and JV´s opening home match!
