Summit participated in the Morristown Beard Tournament which featured 2 pools of 5 teams from the local area. In Summit's group there was Kent Place, North 13th Tech, Lacordaire Academy and Morristown Beard. The group had Pope John, Oak Knoll, Columbia, Morris County Tech and Wardlaw-Hartridge.
Summit had a slow start to pool play, splitting the first 2 sets with Lacordaire Academy (15-18 and 13-9) and then dropping the next 2 to rival Kent Place (14-18 and 9-14). The Hilltoppers played a more consistent match with North 13th Tech but still managed only 1 win after a split of the 2 sets (13-18 and 18-14). Host Morristown Beard was the last opponent in pool play and by far, this was the best match of pool play as the two evenly matched teams battled it out. Summit took both sets by a 22-20 and 8-7 scores.
SHS was seeded 4th into the single elimination 1 set playoffs and faced the 5th seed Morris Tech in the Quarterfinal Round. The Hilltoppers trailed early after a right side kill by MT 4-1 but after a service error gave the ball back to Summit, the Hilltoppers went on a 7-2 run fueled by aces from Casey Nardino and Val Guzman that gave them the lead at 8-6.
Although an Emani Miles' ace gave the Hilltoppers a 10-7 lead, Morris Tech went on a 4-0 run that saw Summit trail by 1 at 10-11. A fortuitous service error by MT knotted up the score and gave Summit the momentum it was looking for as the Hilltoppers serving and defense forced MT into 3 attack errors that gave the team a 14-11 lead.
Just as the Hilltoppers were feeling like they had regained control of the set, Morris Tech fought back again with a 5-0 run to jump out front 15-14. Luckily for Summit, Morris Tech yet again hit a serve out of bounds and that error sparked the Hilltoppers to a 4-0 run fueled by 2 aces by Casey Nardino which sealed the win 18-15 and gave Summit an entrance to the semis against Oak Knoll.
The difference in the match was the Summit service and defense as the Hilltoppers hit for 4 aces to only 1 error out of 18 attempts and had 10 digs to earn their way to victory.
The Semi-Finals against Oak Knoll was a tight match early. Summit fell behind 4-1 early but SHS rallied back and a Cassidy O'Malley kill drew the Hilltoppers even at 5. But then the steady play of SHS disappeared and uncharacteristic errors began to show themselves as the team started to lose control of the match. Oak Knoll went on a 8-0 run (13-5) which saw Summit commit 5 unforced passing errors and effectively ended Summit's bid to get to the finals. The last 10 points had the teams even at 5 points apiece and ended with the final score of 18-10.
Summit ended the day at 5W-5L and 3rd place overall. Congrats to the girls for their outstanding effort.
Highlight Players of the Tournament:
Casey Nardino led the team with 13 kills and a .382 kill% and scored 22 points on the day, 27% of the team's total
Cassidy O'Malley was the most efficient hitter at .267, led the team with 5 blocks and was second on the team with 10 kills
Gabby Mejia was the assist leader with 20 and led the team in serving points & with a 97% serving %
Val Guzman and Casey Nardino led the team with 8 aces apiece
Val Guzman had the highest ace% with 36%
Jess Salter was the team's dig leader with 14 digs.
Julianne Smolyn had a 1.80 pass rating on 42 passing attempts and Jess Salter had a 1.80 on 20 passing attempts to lead the team.
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