The preseason is over, and the games count now. Tuesday the 22nd brought the start of league play for the varsity Dons volleyball team, with College Park coming to Acalanes. The Dons may have been distracted by the approximately 4,700 Homecoming activities taking place this week, and dropped the first set, 23 – 25.
They eventually remembered they were there to play volleyball. The Dons righted the ship in the second set, aided by a massive serving run from junior libero Fran Barbano, cruising to a decisive 25 – 8 win.
The third set was considerably less relaxing. College Park led 24 – 20 and needed just one point to take a 2 – 1 advantage in the match. Senior Sydney Scovic started the comeback with a block. Then Amelia Easley stepped to the service line, opened with an ace, and somehow the Dons kept winning points. Four of them, in fact.
Suddenly it was 25 – 24. After trading points, senior Meher Jeyakrishnan hit a tough serve that eventually led to a College Park hitting error, and the Dons completed the improbable comeback, 27 – 25.
Apparently deciding that was enough drama for one evening, Acalanes made the fourth set considerably easier on everyone. Middles Devyn Murphy and Sydney Scovic dominated the net, while senior Sahar Noroozi provided perhaps the play of the night – a diving, one-armed swing that somehow kept a rally alive and eventually turned into a Dons point.
Acalanes took the set 25–16 and the match, 3–1.
On Thursday, the Dons made the brutal journey several miles down Ygnacio Valley Road to face Northgate. Northgate’s scouting report apparently showed that the Dons were susceptible to extreme cold, so they pumped Arctic air into the gym until it reached a temperature suitable for long-term meat storage. It also made typing notes about the match extremely difficult, so the remainder of this recap is being reconstructed from memory and whatever brain function survived the early stages of hypothermia.
The Dons took the first set and once again found themselves in trouble late in the second, trailing 22–24. Once again, Fran stepped to the service line. She proceeded to keep Northgate completely off balance, delivering two aces during the run. Sydney added a kill, and the Dons turned another 22–24 deficit into a 26–24 win.
By the third set, hypothermia had begun setting in for at least one parent, and possibly the team, as Northgate took it 25–19.
The Dons jumped out to a big lead in the fourth, only to watch Northgate slowly chip away until Acalanes’ advantage had shrunk to 23–22. And this time, it was the younger Dons who finished it.
Sophomore setter Kaia Copen delivered a beautiful back set to junior Quinn Frontiera, who tooled the ball off the Northgate block for point 24. On the next rally, Copen went outside to junior Abby Haimovici, who put away the final ball for a 25–22 win and the match.
Two league matches. Two 3–1 wins. And, somewhat concerningly, two sets in which the Dons stared at a 22–24 deficit and decided that was apparently when they wanted to start playing their best volleyball.
The wins were also a good display of the Dons’ depth and resilience. They were without senior outside hitter Ella Chong and senior libero Sahar Naroozi at Northgate. And while Ella wasn’t swinging from the front row, she joined Lourdes Smith and Fran Barbero in giving the Dons a strong collective defensive effort from the back line.
So the Dons leave the first week of league play 2 – 0. And I left Northgate with no feeling in most of my fingers.
