Girls' Volleyball Edges Out Loomis
The girls’ varsity volleyball team competed at home against Loomis last Saturday. Coming off a big win over Pomfret, the team looked to continue its momentum. Exeter fought hard, and ultimately edged out Loomis in five sets, 3-2.Big Red knew that Loomis was going to be a strong team, having faced it in the championship last year; Exeter expected Loomis to come out hungry, hoping for revenge. Loomis had strong players positioned around the court: a good server, a strong outside hitter, etc. Senior and co-captain Rachel Luo pointed out, “Loomis was a difficult team to play because they have some really strong players. For instance, in one set we got stuck in a rotation because one of their servers had a tough serve that we just couldn’t seem to side out of.”Luo continued, describing the serving talent that made Loomis difficult to play against. “Another thing they do well is distribute their sets; they set the right sides and middles quite frequently,” Luo said. Loomis also had a very high work rate, which was shown in their ability to fight back and take the fourth set.Everything started to click for Big Red last Saturday. Lower Sophie Faliero described this success. “This weekend I felt like the team really started playing, and the determination and strength that we’ve been lacking since the beginning of the season showed,” Faliero said. “In particular, we did a very good job with not getting down on ourselves and on our teammates when we began losing points and this allowed us to pull out a big win in the end.”
“This weekend I felt like the team really started playing, and the determination and strength that we’ve been lacking since the beginning of the season showed.”
Upper Margaret Kraus echoed Faliero. “Winning is the most satisfying when you know your teammates put everything into the game, and that was definitely the case on Saturday. We were all so proud of each other,” Kraus explained.Upper Chloe Scocimara did a great job in the middle front, putting the ball away when the team needed her too. Kat Dumoulin and Sophie Faliero were very successful in returning serves, which, in Luo’s opinion, was “one of the biggest differences between the Loomis game and some of our past games.”Exeter looks to carry their momentum from the Loomis game into their game on Saturday against NMH. “Another hugely important lesson Loomis taught us is that we have to start strong and finish strong. We lost that first set and we made a recovery, but that fourth set definitely humbled us and refocused us for the fifth,” Luo said, reflecting on the game. If the team is able to start and finish well, they will find success against NMH.