This weekend Deerfield Volleyball traveled up to St. Paul’s. After a long bus ride, we had lots of time to get ready and stretch out, and were even able to cheer on our JV girls for a little bit.
In the first set The Big Green had trouble creating offense. We were going up against some tough servers, and our passing just wasn’t allowing us to be in system and run our offense how we would like to. As a team we hit +0.08, while St. Paul’s hit +0.458 as a team. Our blockers got a lot of touches on their hits over the first set, but we couldn’t quite effectively shut them down. The first set ended with a St. Paul’s win, 25-15.
In the second set St. Paul’s came out fast and shut us down with their serving. We had 3 service errors on our 7 total attempts, and it was clear that this game was becoming a test of our mental toughness. The second set saw St. Paul’s winning 25-6, and left the girls from Deerfield with a challenge for the third set.
Between sets the team decided that we needed to pick it up, and not play scared. They went into the third set with a new level of intensity and determination. During this set, we were able to get many more hitting attempts, but we were unable to connect on them. We had 14 hitting errors total. We only had two service errors, and were strong in that department. Overall, we played more confidently. We were running and diving all over the place for balls and really digging in deep to come back and challenge St. Paul’s. The set was back and forth all game, with the teams trading serves and points. This continued through the normal 25-point game and beyond. Down 24-23 Deerfield pushed back to keep the game going. We led 25-24, only to be answered by St. Paul’s who went up 26-25. This end to the day showed incredible serve receive skills by Deerfield, led by our libero and senior captain Jill Carroll. The teams kept battling through blocks, hitting errors, and kills in an attempt to lead by two points and win the game, and it continued until finally the girls from St. Paul’s pulled ahead to a 32-30 win.
The Deerfield girls walked away from the game with a positive attitude about the last set, but with many things to work on. Luckily, we get to face St. Paul’s again later in the season on our home court.
This week we prepare for NMH on Wednesday and Hopkins on Saturday.