V-Ball Falls to Taft in First Game
The Exeter girls’ varsity volleyball team played their first game of the season against Connecticut’s Taft School last Saturday. Despite valiant effort, the game ended in a 3-0 loss for Big Red.
As defending New England Runner-ups fresh off of a home win against St. Paul’s, Exeter’s reputation is on the line once more. The squad is significantly smaller compared to last year, comprised of mostly lowers and uppers, and has been working hard since the first day of preseason.
“Our team will work on becoming more connected and eliminating errors this season. We just graduated a lot of seniors, making around half of the team new this year, so that’s one obstacle that we’re working on overcoming, but we’re all really excited to just play some volleyball, get better and have fun.”
The team graduated a large number of seniors last spring and is in the process of building a new lineup from mostly new faces. As lower Brody Faliero pointed out, the smaller team is not entirely a bad thing. “One difference between this and last year’s team is the size of our squad. We went from 18 to 13 players, which I think will be good for our communication.”
The game got off to a rough start, according to Faliero. “We showed up early, and Taft didn’t come for another hour. So by the start of the game, we were a little worn out from warm ups and our energy was lacking.” Regardless, the first set was pretty evenly matched. Both teams were essentially neck and neck until the end, when Taft pulled away to win 25-20.
The second set mirrored the first. Taft barely got away at the end with a 25-22 win, doubling their lead and throwing Exeter’s backs to the wall. The third set was a battle. Both teams were still very much in the game. The Big Red girls threw everything they had at the opponents, but fell slightly short. Taft won the third set with a score of 29-27, sweeping the match with a final set score of 3-0.
Amidst the upsetting loss, Exeter had some standout performances. Faliero commended both of her captains’ hard work and good plays. “[Senior and co-captain] Jenny [Yang] played well, as always. She holds us together. [Senior and co-captain] Sophie Faliero also killed her hits on the outside.”
Yang added that the newcomers made a positive impact on the game. “We all had some really good plays at the Taft Game. For example, [upper] Angelle Diamond had some fantastic serves and hits.” Senior Ela Ferhangil agreed. “Angelle had a lot of good hits while playing middle during the second half of the game.”
Ferhangil also shared a bit about what Big Red had been working on this weekend. “At the moment, we are working on serving and passing more consistently. We have gotten a lot better with communicating with one another.”
Maintaining a positive outlook, the girls believe that this season will be an auspicious one. The girls have had adequate time to recover and learn from the mistakes that were made. In the short term, Faliero wants to see some improvements in the team’s energy level. “The team needs to improve on getting more motivated when we are down in order to reclaim the lead. At the moment it sort of brings down our energy level.”
Yang also had her own ideas to share. “Our team will work on becoming more connected and eliminating errors this season. We just graduated a lot of seniors, making around half of the team new this year, so that’s one obstacle that we’re working on overcoming, but we’re all really excited to just play some volleyball, get better and have fun.”