The Hilltoppers took a short ride to the unfriendly confines of the Cougar Den of Cranford and despite a hot start, the Summit squad could not get out of their own "serving way" and gave away set 2 and 3 to drop their first match of the season, 25-17, 17-25, 17-25.
Summit jumped out to a 3-1 lead behind kills by Zoe Zacharias and Alison Wauters but soon enough the score was knotted up at 4 after a block by Hannah Barlow. SHS then proceeded to go on a 7-1 run fueled by Barlow's 5 aces, a Cece Webb block and a Vivian Roberts kill to take early control of set 1 11-6 after a service break. But Summit was relentless and went off on another 4-1 run with Wauters hitting for 2 more aces in the run. Cranford just did not seem to have an answer for the SHS serving attack and a few rotations later, Roberts got into the ace party after Zacharias hit for another setter dump kill and Julia Nardino put an overpass down out of the middle and struck for another kill to give the Hilltoppers an unsurmountable 20-10 lead. Despite the fact that SHS won the first set 25-17, the 7-5 late run by Cranford was fueled by 2 free ball receive errors by the Summit crew and 2 serving errors. This was an omen of things to come.
SHS outscored Cranford 19-9 with 9 kills, 2 blocks and 8 aces.
Set 2 and 3 were a carbon copy of the first set except the Cougars got in control early of set 2 with an opening 12-2 run and never got threatened en route to a 25-17 win and set 3 saw the Cougars jump out to a 6-2 lead before SHS reacted and got to within one at 5-6 but on the next rotation, the Cougars ballooned the lead to 13-5 and never looked back as they delivered the first loss of the season to SHS by a 25-17 set 3 score.
It did not take much to figure out that serving errors were the only stat that the Hilltoppers needed to look at to explain the loss.
In every other metric, Summit was Tops.
Total points scored : SHS 41 Cranford 27
Kills: SHS 23 Cranford 16
Blocks: SHS 5 Cranford 3
Aces: SHS 13 Cranford 8
However, the Top was also the match leader in 2 very important categories, serving errors (20 vs. 7) and hitting errors (11 vs. 5)
In set 2 and 3, Summit yielded 25 of their match total 31 errors and 15 of their 20 service errors.
Summit and Cranford scored 12 points apiece in set 2 and SHS out-scored Cranford 10-6 in set 3.
SHS served 66% and the 22% ace % could not overcome that stat.
The team will look to improve on their serving and continue their terrific defensive and offensive work tomorrow at the Healing the Children Tournament at the Rahway Rec.
Highlights:
Barlow and Wauters - 5 aces apiece
Wauters - led team with a 2.11 pass rating
Roberts struck for 9 kills, a kill % of 60 and an efficiency of 46.7%
Barlow and Roberts - 4 digs apiece
Nardino, Webb, Wauters and Barlow - 2 blocks apiece
***Frosh and JV writeup coming this weekend***
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