The Cranford Cougars pushed the Summit Hilltoppers on Thursday but SHS stepped up to the moment and came away with a 2-1 victory on the 9th Grade and Junior Varsity level at home while the Varsity traveled to Cranford and survived an opening 8-0 run to open set 1 and came away with a 2-0 victory!
The 9th Graders took set 1 25-14 with the main damage done under the serving game of Molly Davies who ran off 8 total service points to give SHS a 4-0 and a 21-12 lead that led to the 25-14 set 1 victory.
Set 2 was a closer affair but the Cougars seemed to be in control at 14-9 after 6 rotations. The Hilltoppers came back to within 1 at 14-13 behind Ailish Gutshall's serving rotation but the Cougars ran off a run of their own that forced a TO by the Top at 20-13. Cranford looked to have things in. hand up 23-14 but the Hilltoppers had one run left in them, this time thanks to Amanda Jimenez who brought the Summit 9th graders to within 2 at 23-21 forcing a TO by the Cougars. Unfortunately, the deficit was too large and the Cranford frosh took set 25-21.
The decisive set 3 was over quick as the Hilltoppers took the decisive set 25-6 after being only up 10-5 after 6 rotations. Davies again turned it around with an 8-0 run that had the Top up 19-6 before she was done.
9th Graders stay perfect at 6W-0L.
JV EARNS A TOUGH FOUGHT 7TH WIN!
JV improve to 7W-1L with a 3 set thriller against the Cougars. Summit dropped the first set 15-25, came back the second set with a 25-13 victory and won a nail biter of a third set 25-23 behind clutch serving and hitting in the late stages of the match.
VARSITY TAKES OVER THE COUGAR DEN DESPITE SLOW START TO THE MATCH
Looking to bounce back from the setback to the Pioneers, Summit traveled to Cranford and hoped to leave the Cougar Den intact. Although one can not say that the Hilltoppers came out intact, it was definetly a statement match for the Summit Black and Maroon as the team faced adversity in the form of a motivated and dangerous Cranford squad and came out on top by a 2-0 tally.
Summit opened up the match giving up an ace, hitting for 5 errors, notching a couple of passing and setting errors and just like that, the scoreboard read 8-0 Cranford. Looking at the bench and the players on the court though, one could not see panic nor bad body language and soon the tide would turn. It started with an Alison Wauters kill which was followed by a Cranford hitting error and a Vivian Roberts kill that had SHS down 8-3. Despite a service break by the Cougars and another Summit hitting error which had the Top down 10-3, a 7-0 run by the Hilltoppers stunned the Cougar Den into silence. Roberts hit for 3 kills in the run and the Summit offense forced Cranford into a series of errors that saw the teams knotted at 10.
Cranford seemed to regain their footing and held a 12-10 lead but Roberts nailed 2 kills to erase the SHS deficit. The set was up for grabs and it was the Hilltopper squad who took the challenge and continued to attack despite the early run of errors. An Eva Oberhuber block started the spark and a subsequent Cougar hitting error had the Top up 15-14. Zoe Zacharias had an unexpected kill to lift the SHS squad to an 18-15 and it did not seem to matter that errors kept happening as the Hilltoppers just kept scoring. Julia Nardino helped the squad with a block and Sarah Noa tallied another ace to lift the Top to a 21-16 lead. Cranford tried to stem the tide but SHS had a response for every point that Cranford scored. Roberts tallied 2 kills late in the set and Nardino got an ace on set point to wrap up what turned out to be one of the largest deficits Summit has ever erased.
Cranford started set 2 benefitting from 2 Summit miscues and added a kill to jump out to a 3-0 lead but the Hilltoppers won five of the next six points fueled by Cougar errors that had the Top up 5-4. To the Cougar's credit, their squad showed a ton of fight as well. The Blue and Gold squad went on a 4-0 run after seeing the Hilltoppers take control and looked to have turned the tide up 11-7 up. But the Summit crew responded in the form of two Oberhuber kills which sparked a 4-1 run that had SHS tied at 12. Cranford broke serve on a free ball return error but Summit rattled off 4 points fueled by a Basaman kill and a Noa ace that had the Hilltoppers up 16-13. Roberts had the Maroon and Black up 17-14 after a kill but the Cougar squad erased that deficit with a 3-0 run before Roberts again stymied Cranford with another kill to give Summit the 18-17 lead. Nardino stepped up again on the service line and forced an errant Cougar pass that Oberhuber promptly dispatched for a kill. Nardino followed up with an ace and with the lead at 20-17, Cranford was forced to call a time-out.
That break in momentum had no impact on the sophomore as Nardino hit for an ace again and the Top were up 21-17. Again, credit to the Cranford squad for fighting back yet again as the Cougars clawed back to within 1 at 21-20 but a Roberts kill again cut the run off and Tory MacArthur rattled off an ace to push SHS closer to the set and match win at 23-20. Despite a service break by the Cougars, Summit got another timely kill by Oberhuber to see SHS get three match points. This turned out to be one of the longer match rallies as Thea Rind passed a perfect pass to Zacharias who set up Oberhuber for the win but the Cougars fought that off which forced the Summit defense to react. Rebecca Thompson dug out a Cougar attack but Wauters could not finish off the attack and Basaman was forced to dig another Cranford ball back which led to an Oberhuber dump kill for the 25-21 set and match win!
Summit improves to 5W-3L!
Nardino was the server of the match with a serve rating of 2.67 on 11/12 serving and 3 aces.
Roberts led the squad with a 2.14 pass rating although Rind tallied the most perfect passes on the team (5/8) for the match.
Another match, another double digit kill number by Roberts who had 10 kills and a kill % of 40% and an efficiency of .280 although Oberhuber was far more lethal out of the middle with a kill % of 54.5% and a .273 efficiency on the day.
Thompson also had another double digit dig day with 10 of the team's 32 digs.
Zacharias tallied another 17 assists and ran a very effective offense on the day.
Summit takes on Governor Livingston on Monday at home, ALJ on the road on Wednesday and travel to Linden on Friday.
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