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Monday, April 29, 2024 | 11:47am
Midway through the men's volleyball season, Hempfield was still trying to hold serve. The harder the Spartans tried, the more inconsistent they seemed to become.
That's perhaps the aspect that slows Hempfield's progress the most.
“You don't want to hear it,” Hempfield coach John Howell said in response to the very question of how much time the Spartans spend practicing serve technique. “The amount of time we've put into this piece is phenomenal. I don't know if there's going to be any pressure on them.”
Hempfield fell short in the area where a sharp player could immediately attack from the service line.
“Our serve wasn't aggressive enough and we served out too many times and it took us out of rallies,” Howell said. “When you play at this level, you have to be able to serve tough, you have to be able to serve consistently. That's the biggest problem we have.”
After a recent 3-1 loss at home to Seneca Valley, Howell stood near the net and chatted with Raiders coach Brett Poirier, whose team had come back from a 1-0 deficit.
“He said, 'Hey, if you had served, we would have lost tonight and ended up here,'” Howell said. “I just shrugged my shoulders because I knew he was probably right.
“If you miss two or three serves in a row, it just changes the whole momentum and the other team gains confidence from that.”
Making matters worse is the hole created by the graduation of Owen Kelly, a WPIAL Section 3-3A first-team all-star and the team's unquestioned leader a year ago.
Coach Howell was quick to praise the several experienced returners on the veteran roster, but was tinkering with a lineup hungry for better teamwork.
“We changed our lineup to get that feeling,” Howell said. “The chemistry wasn't right.”
The senior pair of opponents Dom Palmiero and middle hitter Josh Riley return after joining Kelly for Section 3-3A first-team All-Star eligibility last season.
Libero Nate Biondi and outside hitter Drew Gordon, both juniors, return after being voted to the second team last season, and senior defensive specialist Colton, who was selected to the third team a year ago.・The same goes for Butina.
Despite Howell's experience, he can be perplexed at times by his team's inconsistent play.
“We're just going up and down,” he said. “You can't have all six players on all cylinders on the same day for the whole match. They'll have a great match in one set, but not in the whole match. Our strengths right now. is a defense.”
Howell said Kelly's absence was noticeable and cited Gordon as the most likely candidate for the lead role.
“Drew Gordon is our most consistent hitter,” Howell said. “He plays hard night in and night out. He has the most kills. He's definitely our Terminator right now. He's playing well, but he's still a junior.”
By the way, Kelly made a big impact in his first collegiate season at Division III Geneva, earning Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference Freshman of the Year honors and making the all-conference third team.
The outside hitter led Geneva with 325 kills on the season, third most in program history, and his 36 aces ranked fifth on the year.
With nearly half the season left, Hempfield (4-4, 2-3, entering Section 3-3A last week) hopes to gain some momentum as the schedule approaches the postseason. Was.
“We just have to keep working hard on two things,” Howell said. “Service is a big job. big The first is that the attack is a little more consistent. Overtaking becomes a little strange and the driving range becomes narrower.
“A lot of years, we come out of strong, but we hit a kind of stagnation early on. Maybe this team will be a little different. We'll start a little slower than we've been in the past, and we'll grow even more.” If we can get a little more consistency out of some of our players, that could be a huge contributor to our success.”
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