The Varsity squad entered the Monday matchup with their old rivals buyoed by the fact that their serving and multi-pronged attack had sustained them in the first two matches of the young season. The squad, however, forgot to check with Rahway if they had been impressed, and the Indians let SHS know from the beginning they were there to play for an upset.
Game 1 started very auspiciously for the Maroon and White with Rahway opening up a 3-0 lead behind 2 aces by the RHS squad. A kill by Vivian Roberts had the squad on the board and the teams were knotted up at 3 before too long. The Indians showed resilience and fought back to a 6-3 lead but the Hilltoppers had already been responsible for 4 of those 6 points. The rash of errors continued with a dig error, 2 hitting errors and an ace gave Rahway an 11-4 lead. The Summit faithfulere nervous and were justified in feeling that way as the Maroon and White had played 15 points and were literally responsible for 11 of them!!! Captain Sarah Maldonado made her return to the floor and quickly put down a kill which led to a couple of more points and the Top was only down by 4 at 7-11. An Indian kill and another SHS error seemed to mute the enthusiasm of the team as the lead was back up to 13-7 but Erin Vostal ripped a kill and Meghan Tarashukl got an ace to begin to pull the squad up at 13-9 but, yet again, 3 consecutive attack errors had seemingly given Rahway the final momentum with a 16-9 lead. Time-out Martins.
Coming off the time-out, Maldonado hit for a kill from the outside which broke the momentum but a service error and an errant attack had RHS at the doorstep of a victory at 18-10. But then Vostal stepped up and nailed a kill, hit for an ace and Summit had cut the lead to 6 at 19-13. This time, the Rahway nerves were palpable and 2 errors by the Indians had Summit within 4 at 19-14. Another break of serve appeared to be the calming influence for the Indians but things were not at all what they seemed as the team proceeded to go on a 3-0 run which saw Roberts put down a kill for the 20-18 deficit. Time-out Rahway.
After the time-out, Summit outscored their opponent 7-3, a run which featured 2 kills, 1 ace and 1 block. Summit out-scored the Indians 14-8 in the game with a 9-3 advantage on kills.
Game 2 saw the Hilltoppers opened up with an 11-2 run that had the Hilltoppers comfortably ahead 12-2 behind 5 kills and 3 aces by Sarah Brennan. Rahway began to make the effort to take the road less traveled and scored on a 4-0 run that had the squad down 12-6. Summit responded well though and extended that lead to 18-8 behind the key blocking of Annabella Yorio and crucial kills by Maldonado. The game and match seemed to be in order and indeed that was not the case as Rahway continued to fight, first a 5 out 6 run which got the Indians to within 6 at 20-14. A Catherine Eldridge kill and a Brennan ace destroyed any hope left for the RHS faithful as the lead ballooned again to 22-14. After a couple of hitting errors saw Rahway get to within 5 at 22-17, Coach Martins called a time-out which did little to stem the tide as the RHS squad got another point off a Summit error but then Maldonado and Eldridge combined for 2 key kills to put the game out of reach at 24-19.
Summit out-killed Rahway 21-10, out-paced the Indians with a 3-1 blocking advantage and hit for 7 aces to win the scoring battle 31-16. The team was a little more inconsistent from the service line, serving at 85.7% but also saw the team hit for aces at a 14.3% clip.
Kiera Stocks notched 11 digs in the loss and passed at an incredible 2.67, giving up no aces for the match.
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