The Hilltoppers took on the Kent Place Dragons and the Dayton Bulldogs on consecutive home matches this past Thursday and Friday. Summit was looking to beat the Dragons for the first time since 2011 and the team had faced Dayton most recently in 2014, a 2-1 loss away. Summit lost a heartbreaker 25-8, 15-25, 27-25 decision to Kent Place and dropped a 25-13, 25-19 decision to Dayton on Senior Day to close out the last home match of the 2015 season.
In game 1, Summit opened up the first match against their cross-town rivals, the Kent Place Dragons. The match opened up perfectly for the Hilltoppers with a 25-8 dominance of the Dragons. Val Guzman led the team with 5 points with a 10/10 serving performance and a team leading 3 aces and 4 digs. Grace Galuppo and Gabby Mejia ran a balanced offense with 4 players hitting for 2 kills apiece. Summit hit for a .438 hitting efficiency and passed at a 2.0 rating in set 1 and looked poised to upset the Dragons.
Set 2 was a different story for the Hilltoppers. Summit passed for a 1.27 rating which led to few offensive opportunities. SHS hit for only 4 kills and a .058 efficiency and served just over 70%, ingredients for a less than stellar performance.
Set 3 did not start much better and SHS was down 8-2 before the set was less than 5 minutes old. But this Hilltopper team has shown all year that despite the situation, their effort never wanes. Summit went on a 10-2 run after a Kent Place attack error fueled by kills by Grace Galuppo and Angela Scott and an ace by Val Guzman. The teams settled into a side-out battle for the remainder of this exciting decisive set.
SHS trailed 22-23 before the Hilltopper defense forced a middle attack error and followed that up with a Casey Nardino kill. Serving for the match, Val Guzman put in play a tough serve that forced the Dragons to send the ball over on a free but SHS was unable to get the kill despite a great attack attempt by Nardino. KP didn't miss the 2nd time, tying the score up at 24. Down 24-25 and facing a match point, SHS got a break when the Dragons served the ball into the net but the Hilltoppers could not capitalize as the team saw the Dragons hit for a kill while Summit got a hitting error to close out the match 27-25.
Despite the close game, the difference in the match was the offensive output of the Hilltoppers from set 1 compared to set 2 and 3. In set 1, SHS out-killed KP 8-5 and had 1 hitting error to KP's 6. That was a 14-6 scoring advantage in that set alone. In contrast, sets 2 and 3 saw SHS hit for only 8 kills and garnering 7 errors while KP hit for 22 kills while committing 18 errors. That was a 29-26 advantage for the Dragons but more importantly, a 14 point advantage in offensive production by Kent Place. In the decisive 3rd set, KP out-killed SHS by a 14-4 advantage.
Summit had little time to ponder their lost opportunity against the Dragons as Dayton came in on Friday, Senior Day, to take on SHS. The Hilltoppers couldn't slow the Bulldog offense and had trouble getting their offense in gear as the team fell 25-13, 25-19 to Dayton. Summit mustered only 9 kills in the match while Dayton hit for 14 but the major problem was the serve receive as the Bulldogs nailed Summit for 13 aces while Summit could only get 2 aces. Dayton also served at a 90% rate while SHS was only 85%. This was the difference in set 2 as the Bulldogs trailed late 19-18 after a Val Guzman kill but nailed 4 aces in the last stages of the set to blow open the set and close the set and match on a 7-0 run for the 25-19 win. Summit players could only shake their heads as they had only given up 3 aces till that point of the match.
The day belonged to the seniors as Hannah Calabrese, Aila Poticano, Rau Soares, Sandra Bazalar, Mel Campos, Emani Miles and Angela Scott saw their 4 year career come to a close at home. Happy tears were shed and emotional goodbyes were shared by the players as the girls celebrated their improvement and resiliency as a team this season through multiple injuries, heart-breaking losses and major upsets of teams in the county.
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