Summit traveled to Westfield in their only match of the week to see if they could prove to themselves and the conference that they would be a team to be reckoned with at the county tournament and in states based on their performance against the #12 Blue Devils.
SHS fell to Westfield 25-17, 25-10 in their first meeting as the Summit squad lost their serve receive in set 2 which led to the Blue Devils out-scoring the Top for the match 37-19 from a 23-15 kill lead and a 9-4 ace advantage and a 5-0 block advantage. The silver lining was that the Hilltoppers were very close late in set 1 as the home team were only outscored by a 15-11 margin mainly because of a 4-1 ace advantage which was earned by the Blue Devils late in set 1.
Could the Summit squad do better the second time around and on the road?
An ace by Welsh and a dump kill by N Feuerstake had the Top up by 2 early and 2 rotations later, the serving pressure of Henry led to a Nowicka kill and 2 Westfield errors to see the SHS side up 6-3. Ge and Deyonge combined for a couple of kills a few rotations later and suddenly, near the midway point of set 1, SHS was up 9-7. Westfield kept fighting back the entire set from 2 or 3 down to tie or get within one and after a Ge dump kill and an A Feuerstake back row attack hjad given the Top a 13-10 lead, Summit allowed a 4-0 run by the Blue Devils (2 free ball errors, 1 hitting error SHS) that put the Westfield side up 14-13. A serving error by the Westfield side knotted up the score at 14 and opened the door for Summit to make a move and with an ace by Ge, the Top did just that. Then Herring stuff blocked their OH and followed up with a kill that had the Hilltoppers up 17-15 which forced a Westfield TO. But off the TO, SHS suffered through a 7-0 run by the Blue Devils even after SHS called their own TO to trail 22-17. The unfortunate thing was that the team gave away 3 points on hitting errors and one free ball return error in the midst of the run that could've been the difference to ending the home team's run.
To the Hilltoppers' credit, even when down 24-19, the team kept fighting off match points with A Feuerstake getting a kill to pull SHS to within 3 at 24-21 but the next rally was unsuccessful by the Top and Westfield closed it out 25-21.
The set saw the Top out-score the Blue Devils 13-11 but the Westfield side had 3 less hitting errors and the Summit side got called on 4 faults to only one by the home side which, at the end of the set, were the difference in the result.
Set 2 was saw a 14-11 point lead by the Blue Devils but yet again, SHS showed a massive competitive improvement from match day 1. The set however, started quite badly for the Top as the team had 2 consecutive hitting errors followed up by 2 serving errors and a free ball return error which gave Westfield a 9-5 lead. Ge and Basaman led the Hilltoppers to a 3-0 run which had Summit down 9-8 but another 3-0 Westfield run had the Blue Devils up 12-8. SHS continued to fight off Westfield's offensive sets and started to go point for point with the #12 squad but SHS was going to need a run if they were to win the second set. Trailing 17-13 late things did not look good, especially when the home side got a late 5-1 run that had Summit on the ropes 22-14. Ge again found a way to score and stopped the run but WF reestablished control and had a 24-15 lead and 9 match points in the next rotation. Herring kept SHS alive with another huge block and Ge followed it up with an ace but the Summit ladies ran out of points and saw a 25-17 set 2 loss that was both a silver lining and a frustrating result as the Top had gotten very close to knocking off the #12 team if not for some unforced errors.
KILLS ACES BLOCKS TOTAL POINTS
SHS 18 3 3 24
WF 19 5 1 25
Lesson: Summit is good enough to go against some of the heavyweights in the county (Kent Place, Westfield) but the squad needs to get better at not hurting themselves in key moments, such as service errors or hitting errors or net/ball handling faults in tight game situations.
Westfield had only a combined 7 hitting and fault errors.... SHS tallied 14... add in WF's only 1 free ball return error and SHS's 5 and it adds up to 8 points from the Blue Devils and 19 from Summit.
Summit was close but not clean enough yet to knock off a top 15 team. #progressionnotperfection
MATCH STATS: BEASTS - BY THE NUMBERS:
ACE - Ge 2, Welsh 1
SERVE RATING (at least 7% of team attempts) - Ge 2.00, A Feuerstake 1.86
SERVE % (at least 7% of team attempts) - Basaman 100%, Ge 89.9%
PASS RATING (1.8 or higher) - Ge and A Feuerstake 1.89
PERFECT PASSES - Henry, Ge and A Feuerstake 3
KILLS - Ge 9, Nowicka 2
EFFICIENCY (at least 10% of team attempts) - Ge .368, Nowicka .000
KILL % (at least 10% of team attempts) - Ge 47.4%, Nowicka 22.2%
DIGS - Henry 9, Ge 8
BLOCKS - Herring 3, N Feuerstake 2
ASSISTS - Welsh 16
***TOP POINT SCORERS (Kills, Aces, Blocks***)
Ge 11, Herring 5, N Feuerstake 4
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