Volleyball Unhappy after 3-1 Victory
After a disappointing loss to Andover last Wednesday, which ended their undefeated streak, the Exeter girls volleyball team grabbed another win this past weekend. The squad made the trip down to Deerfield last Saturday and came back with a decisive 3-1 victory under their belt. However, many of the girls were unsatisfied with the victory, saying that they didn’t play to their full potential.
“I don’t think it was our strongest game,” upper Rachel Luo said. Luo went on to say while she felt that there were a few individuals who shined, the team did not mesh well as a cohesive unit, failing to execute on several key plays and forgetting many of the techniques they had worked on in practice.
“We won three sets and lost one set. This should be unacceptable if we expect to be the first team in the league. Deerfield is 12th in our league and we shouldn’t have even let them get 10 points in a set.”
“The Andover loss was really tough on us, and we can definitely learn a lot from it,” Luo said. “I know that we have the capabilities to win at E/a, it’s just a matter of communicating and playing to the top of our game. Lately we’ve been re-focusing on the basic fundamentals, and I think that’ll be really helpful going forward.”
This regression to basic training has the potential to be greatly advantageous to the girls team, since many of the basic skills and drills were glossed over during this year’s training.
“Typically we spend the first week or so on basics, but this year, since we had more experienced players we were able to do more advanced drills early on,” Luo said.
Captain Katya Scocimara lost some sleep over Saturday’s performance and called the game “the worst game we’ve played this season.” Scocimara said that despite the win, the level of play from the squad was completely unsatisfactory.
“We won three sets and lost one set. This should be unacceptable if we expect to be the first team in the league,” Scocimara said. “Deerfield is 12th in our league and we shouldn’t have even let them get 10 points in a set.” Scocimara said that the team lacked the concentration necessary to play well against their opponents.
“I think that it wasn’t supposed to be a hard game, but we weren’t focused enough to play our best,” she said. “I think that the hardest thing was that we didn’t uphold our standard that we’ve set for ourselves.”
Scocimara went on to express her hopes that the team will bounce back after such a disappointing showing last weekend. “I’m hoping that in the next week we regain our confidence and our composure. We need to go back to the basics and really focus on getting our fundamental skills down,” she said.
Scocimara hopes that this will help the players better hone their basic techniques, as well as increase their overall volleyball knowledge. “I also hope that we can do more team bonding to try and bring each other closer, because at the end of the day, we are a team and we win and lose together.”
Lower Chloe Scocimara said that she felt the game went “okay,” and that she hoped the team would continue to improve and give their all in future games. “I hope to play our best every game and not drop to the level of play of the other team,” Scocimara said.