On this day though, the team could not repeat its performance as repeated serving and passing miscues gave the Indians ample opportunities to dominate Summit. The silver lining of the match was Captain Maddie Young's serving which brought the team pack from enormous deficits (19-10 and 20-12) to tie or within 1 at each set. The Hilltoppers, however, were not able to convert their opportunities at that juncture and fell to Rahway in the latter stages rather easily.
Meanwhile, the Varsity squad was facing a daunting task as the team traveled to #2 Westfield to take on the Blue Devils. Summit, a clear underdog, was looking to shock the county aby relying on their serving and passing to stay competitive with Westfield.
Set 1 started off rather ominously as a great Valerie Guzman serve led to a less than potent Blue Devil attack that was dug up by the Hilltoppers but yielded nothing other than a hitting error. On the next ball, Casey Nardino hammered a kill to even up the score but a quick service error gave the ball right back to Westfield and their serving offense went to work, creating poor attacking opportunities for SHS and running the score to 8-1 before it was done. Westfield maintained tha 6-7 point cushion throughout the majority of the set, leading 9-3 and 13-6, with Summit not being able to create a run of their own. At 15-7, the Blue Devils pushed their final run, a 10-3 run that closed out the score 25-10.
Although the score didn't indicate it, there were a lot of long rallies and transition defensive opportunities for Summit during the set. It was, in many respects, a good set by the Hilltoppers but the team struggled in closing out points. The team hit for only 4 kills and had 0 aces in the set.
The 2nd set was much more exemplary of the play of the Hilltoppers. Although the quad was down 0-2 early, an Angela Scott kill and a Guzman ace had SHS knotted up at 2 rather quickly. A Nardino kill and a Rau Soares kill had the team up 8-6 and Summit started to force Westfield into hitting errors as their block and transition defense were coming alive. But the Blue Devils had forced Summit into passing errors due to their outstanding serving attack and that facet of the game started to become a factor as the set wore on. Westfield jumped out to a 12-8 lead after a series of passing miscues and only a Soares kill broke the momentum briefly at 9-12. Westfield went back on serve and SHS was on the negative side of an 8-0 run that had Westfield up 20-9. SHS did not give in though, and outscored the Blue Devils 7-5 the rest of the way but the damage was done and the team fell to the #2 seed 25-10, 25-16.
Summit hit for 6 kills and a .211 hitting efficiency in the set and also hit for 2 aces.
Casey Nardino led the offense with 3 kills and Val Guzman and Gabby Mejia led the defensively with 4 digs apiece. Jocelyn Mendez passed for an astounding 2.3 pass rating giving up only 1 ace in the entire match and receiving the most amount of serves from the Blue Devils.
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