Shs_09-06

Jeff Green | Feb 12, 2009

Preparing to strike, Sydenham senior girls out play Napanee Hawks 3-0

The Sydenham girls’ junior and senior volleyball teams faced off at home on February 5 against the Napanee Hawks in two exciting games.

Both Sydenham teams secured their wins in 3-0 sets and overall maintained a wide point spread in the majority of their sets.

The juniors’ final third set score was 29-27, the closest in their match. Coach Joanne Brown managed to play the entire team during the final set. Brown seemed pleased by the team’s performance but admitted, “We’re relishing being unnoticed at this time so that the team can really concentrate on their game.” The juniors are currently seated in 2nd place with one more league game to play.

In the second match, Sydenham's senior Eagles out-played Napanee winning 3 straight sets 25-12, 25-18 and 24-19. The ongoing communication between the Sydenham players was strongly apparent throughout the entire game and resulted in the team’s confident lead throughout.

Napanee took the lead once in set 3 and though they had strong serves and scored some key points just inside of the line through the game, they also missed a lot of plays due to miscommunication and errors.

The senior Eagles, demonstrating that they are not a team to sit back on their heels though in the lead, continued to dive and slide for difficult returns until the very end. Player #9 Sara Martinali in particular made a number of nice saves in set 3.

Team captains #3 Shannon Walsh and #12 Meghan Herrington credited the team’s strong communication skills on the fact that many of the players have been playing together for years now.

Coaches Sharry Martin and Stephanie Dixon likely deserve credit for instilling in their players the determination to play at their best at all times. During a timeout near half time the coaches encouraged the team to concentrate on limiting their number of errors, since according to head coach Martin, "That is often what it tends to come down to in the end."

The seniors now sit in second place tied with Ernestown with one game left to play in the league. On Tuesday in Sydenham they play KCVI, which is tied for first. It will be an exciting match and will likely draw a large crowd of supporters to the Eagles’ nest.

Both Sydenham teams have secured a spot in the playoffs and will be playing their first playoff quarter final games back to back on Tuesday February 17 in Sydenham.