The JV and Varsity Teams faced off at home against an Oak Knoll side that had seen its performance improve significantly in the second half of the season and it showed in their two matches versus the Hilltoppers. Junior Varsity improved to 12W-1L with a convincing 2-0 win relying on their serving and timely hitting to fight off the charge of the Royals.
Varsity also won 25-11 and 28-26 in a surprising test of adversity right before the start of the County Tournament to improve to 10W-3L. In set 1, Summit out-killed the Royals 11-4 and out-block and out-ace the Blue and White 4-1 for a 15-5 score advantage in a 25-11 set win. The beginning of the set established the tone as the Hilltoppers got out to an 11-3 lead and never looked back. Vivian Roberts had 2 kills early to spot the Top a 3-0 lead. Julia Nardino added a kill and an ace to increase the lead to 6-1 forcing a time-out by the Royals. The time-out helped out the visitors as they broke serve and cut the lead down to 3. Roberts put a ball down to stem the run and that led to a Hilltopper run fueled by kills by Eva Oberhuber and Allison Wauters and a Torie MacArthur ace got the Summit crew to an 11-3 lead they just would not yield.
Set 2 was a bit different right from the start. Oak Knoll jumped out to a 3-0 lead but SHS did manage to tie things up after a Hope Basaman kill. The good feelings were short lived though as the Royals pulled another 3-0 run to go up 7-4. This time the Hilltoppers relied on Roberts to end the run with a kill and Oberhuber got the Top to within 1 at 6-7 with a slide kill.
Midway through the set, the visitors had an 11-8 lead but then the Hilltopper squad seemed to get a handle of the set with a 5-0 run (Cece Webb, Roberts block, 2 aces Sarah Noa) that got the Top in the lead 13-11. Later in the set the Oak Knoll crew had the lead at 17-16 but Oberhuber again got a kill out of the middle to knot the score at 17. With the Hilltoppers down 19-20 a rotation later, Ally Lipchitz fooled everyone on the court with a setter dump kill that pulled Summit even at 20 and allowed Basaman to step up and nail an ace to zone 5 for a 21-20 lead. The Royals responded but a rotation later the Oak Knoll team was forced into a time-out after an attack error had Summit tied at 22. A tough serve by Nardino led to a return error by the Royals but SHS could not capitalize and the score showed 23-23. The subsequent serve by the visitors was easily passed up by Rebekah Thompson and Roberts put the set by Lipchitz down with authority and the Maroon and Black had earned their first set and match point. Oak Knoll got a crucial kill to tie the score at 24 but a hit by Oberhuber forced a ball handling error and Summit had earned yet another set and match point. To the Royals' credit, the team did not give up and found itself yet again tied at 25 but a Webb hit forced an errant return by the Oak Knoll crew to give the Top a 3rd set and match point that was yet again thwarted by the Royals. A serving error by the visitors gave the Summit squad a 4th set and match point and this time Noah was able to slam the door on any Royals' hope with another ace that set the final score at 28-26.
Noa led the Top with a 2.77 serve rating and 3 aces with an 13/13 serving performance.
Thompson had a nearly perfect 2.70 pass rating and notched 7 perfect passes out of 10 attempts and was the digs leader with 5.
Roberts was the top point scorer for the match with 10 points and led the squad with 8 kills out of 16 swings and a 50% kill % and a .250 efficiency along with chipping in with 2 blocks on defense.
Zacharias set up 11 of the 15 Hilltopper kills for the match.
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