KARL PEARSON
JEFFERSON — There’s no accounting for the rate of maturation for a team.
With only two seniors on its roster and a group of young players just finding their niche at the varsity level, SS. John and Paul’s volleyball team has gone through several peaks and valleys this year in relationship to the high standards the Heralds had performed at for nearly a decade before.
Now, as the regular season winds down, it appears the Heralds are finally working toward those standards again. It showed in their convincing 25-11, 25-20, 25-16 non-conference victory Thursday over Jefferson.
“I think this is the best we’ve played this year,” SJP coach Stephanie Kubec said. “Our seniors (middle hitter Jessica Hunyady and outside hitter Mary Mahoney) have really stepped up and taken leadership roles and have done a good job with them.
“We’ve really been working with the girls on their passing and serve reception. We’ve also talked to them about just making an attempt on the ball. I can live with aggressive mistakes.”
Hunyady and Mahoney agreed with their coach’s assessment.
“I think that was one of our better matches of the season,” Hunyady, who had eight ace spikes and four ace blocks to go with 12 points, said. “I feel more confident out there and I think I’m concentrating on the game better. I think we’ve stopped dwelling on our mistakes.”
“I think we’ve been getting better and better,” Mahoney, who cranked out 20 ace spikes and supplied six ace blocks to go with 11 points, said. “We’re getting better and better defense and we’re passing the ball up.
“We have a new serve reception pattern that really has been better as of last week. And I think we’ve come together as a team.”
SJP (14-4) was off and running from the outset. The first game was tied at 4 before Mahoney got rolling. She cracked 10 of her ace spikes in that game and also tacked on two of her ace blocks. That all backed up seven points each from Carly Penna, who finished as the Heralds’ leading scorer with 14 points, and seven from Kristina Krumins, who contributed 13 points and 43-of-43 setting.
The second game was again tied at 4 when the Heralds took command. Hunyady and Mahoney each scored four points, with Mahoney pounding out six more ace spikes and three ace blocks and Hunyady added three ace spikes. Ashley Fedler also had three of her six ace spikes in that game. Jefferson put up its best fight of the night in the second game, tying it at 17 before the Heralds pulled away to the win.
The third game followed the pattern of the first, with SJP taking off from a tie at 3. Hunyady had three of her ace spikes and three ace blocks, while Mahoney had her last four ace spikes. Jen Kapalin, who also had 10 points for the Heralds, scored seven points in that game.
Jefferson coach Sherri Britton said the Falcons just had no answers for SJP’s assault.
“It was the same problems we’ve been having all season, just a different day,” she said. “We just can’t seem to put the ball down. We had some good volleys and got some blocks against them, but we just can’t finish.
“We work on trying to do that every day in practice, but we have to execute what we practice every day. We missed (libero) Alex Willis (who has a hip problem) and we weren’t getting the passes we needed. We just didn’t execute.”
Hailey Burns, Hannah Francis and Colleen Geraghty each had nine points to lead Jefferson (9-10). Geraghty contributed three ace dinks, while Francis had four ace spikes. Lizzy Ziemski added seven points and five ace spikes.
