Despite the present looking discouraging and every time there is a change in sports it always seems to negatively impact our season, the reality is that THERE IS A SEASON TO LOOK FORWARD TO beginning on March 1st!
Focus on what you can control on a daily basis and stop focusing on what you can not do anything about. Let us look at some amazing things last year that should help you look forward to what will be a great experience!
Frosh: The success of these girls versus established programs with many girls who had played before was insane! The best example of this was the competitive match versus Union Catholic, a perennial top 10 NJ Varsity Team with girls on the 9th grade team who have been playing for at least 2-3 years! The number of these young ladies who have been playing Club or working on skills in the off-season bodes well for the future as they will become the foundation of the Varsity Squad.
INAUGURAL SEASON #2: 10W-7L
JV: Forget their #1 ALL TIME 19W-5L RECORD SETTING 2019 season with a .791 winning %. Let us look at the records that got broken and how exciting the future might just be for us.
Szabados - 87 digs #3 all time behind Brennan and Tarashuk (both DS on Varsity)
Eldridge - 76 kills #3 all time behind Yorio and Maldonado (OH/OPP and OH on Varsity)
Parella - 225 assists #1 all time but behind the 4-2 system combo of Thompson and McDonnel (OH and S on Varsity)
The biggest news was the offensive production of a team which was mainly made up of sophomores who were NOT CUT as 9th graders but we kept as an unofficial JV2/9th grade squad. The largest number of club players come from this group!
Varsity: 11 Wins was the 3rd highest number of wins from 2010 on and the 5th highest number of wins since 1998!!! We came within 2 wins of qualifying to Groups in 2019 and we would have been a top 10 ranked team in sectionals, finally a state tournament championship reality for the 2020 season!!!
Stocks returns entering her THIRD Varsity season leading the team in serving % (91.9) and also serving in the most productive rotation of the year, winning 55.5% of all points she served. She is now #1 all time with 315 digs, #1 in digs per set (5.4), #1 in total serve receptions (334) as she took over the #1 passer role this year and slid into #3 all time with a 5.8 receptions per set tally.
Maldonado made a huge splash onto the team after finishing her sophomore season as the main JV weapon. As a junior, Maldonado broke into the top 3 all time offensive weapons with 141 kills, knocking off Johnson from the list despite Johnson being part of the best SHS team ever in 2011.
Walsh was part of our 2-headed setting monster (Guenther) which tallied 388 assists to take over the #3 all time best tally for a season and taking over the #3 slot as well in assists per set (6.5). This 2 setter 5-1 hybrid (Covid school pun intended) was a new wrinkle to the offense, never seen at SHS before, and led brilliantly by Walsh who was the mainstay of the 3 hitter option rotations. Under this system, the ladies quarterbacked the team to the 2nd best kill numbers since 2014 and the 3rd best number in a decade.
The 2019 squad (returning most of the starters) scored the 3rd most amount of points in a decade (kills+aces+blocks) with 691 and defensively, last year’s squad was the best in over a decade with 831 digs and 13.85 digs per set with a completely new blocking scheme that yielded 53 blocks for the season, 4th highest amount in a decade!!!
2019 was also a banner year from the service line as the team hit for 199 aces (3rd best in a decade) led by the softball arms of Brennan, Guidetti, Walsh and Tarashuk who were the top 4 ace servers on the team. Of note, Guidetti scored 46 aces (#1 in 2019) in 247 attempts (#1 in 2019) and #2 in point scoring % (54.3).
PLAYER HIGHLIGHTS:
Serving (min 90 serves)
Best Serving % - Stocks 91.9%
Best Ace % - Guidetti 18.6%
Best Serve Rating - Brennan 2.17
Best Point Scoring % - Stocks 55.2%
Serve Receive
Most Perfect 3 Passes - Stocks 156
Best 3 Pass % - Stocks 40.4%
Best Pass Rating - Stocks 2.02
Lowest Error % - Stocks 13.5%
Attack
Highest Number of Kills - Maldonado 141
Best Hitting Efficiency (K-E/ATT) - Maldonado .243
Best Kill % ((K/ATT)*100) - Maldonado 34.9%
Digs
Highest Number of Digs - Stocks 317
Best Dig % - Stocks 86.6%
Blocks
Highest Number of Blocks - Goudreau 24
Highest Blocks/Game - Vostal .4
Setting
Most Assists - Walsh 171
Best Assist Conversion Rate - Walsh 50.0%
Most Assists per Game - Walsh 3.0
Point Scoring (Offensive Players)
Most Points Scored - Maldonado 147
Best Net Point Total (Pts. Earned - Pts. Lost) - Maldonado 83
Point Scoring (Defensive Players)
Most Points Scored - Guidetti 59
Highest Points per Game - Guidetti 1.0
