Volleyball Womens 1sts
Time: Saturday 16.00
Location: Tent
Points: Lancaster 4 - York 0
The York women’s volleyball team lost to Lancaster 3-0 this Saturday afternoon in a short game that lasted only an hour and 15 minutes. The teams appeared evenly matched at the beginning, but Lancaster player Bianca Meyer-Huebner kept hitting unreturnable spikes to rack up points for her team in the second and third games of the match.
The first game proved to be an optimistic start, with good digging by York and long rallies between the two teams. The spirited crowds for both sides made the excitement palpable in the tiny gym–not only when teams scored points, but throughout the entire game. Both teams continually made out-of-bounds serves which kept the scores close. While York favored the bump-set-spike routine, Lancaster liked to mix it up, which seemed to throw York off. Lancaster won 25-19.
The start of second game was a lot sloppier for York. Spirits seemed to be down as players kept making hits into the net. However, York came back from a 2-11 score to tie 13-13 because of Lancaster’s sloppy communication and their multiple out-of-bounds hits. Despite this, Lancaster pushed ahead with their secret weapon, Meyer-Huebner, whose merciless spikes helped push her team to victory. Lancaster won 19-25.
The third game was a struggle for York at the start, but they again stayed within one or two points of Lancaster until the middle of the game. York then had trouble returning hits and aces abounded for Lancaster. Lancaster won 25-15.
“We [York] played well in general,” player Emine Aydal said. “[Meyer-Huebner] was tall and difficult to play against–we had to block her hits or we’d lose the point. But we had good team spirit, which they didn’t have because their success was based on one person.”
Captain Charmain Heah agreed. “We had lots of fighting spirit and fought back in the second game to tie up the scores,” she said. “The other team was relient on [Meyer-Huebner] and we’d consistently score more points when she was in the back row and couldn’t hit. Unlike their team, we had six people contributing equally.”
Lancaster player Ira Nuremberg applauded her team’s spirit and cooperation, but admitted “some of our single players were better than [York’s] players.”
Despite this disappointing outcome, Aydal and Hume were proud of their team’s performance. The team has grown from 6 people at the start of the year to the current 16. “We’re a new team, and to see how far we’ve come from the fall is amazing,” Heah said. “I feel nothing but pure satisfaction with how much we have improved over the year.”
Kelly Neukom
