Massapequa Girls Volleyball Dispatches Herricks

What first appeared to be a cakewalk turned ugly for the Massapequa Chiefs girls volleyball team in the third game of their Nassau Class AA quarterfinal against the Herricks Highlanders. However, despite strong opposition, the Chiefs managed to prevail, winning the match in straight sets, 25-13, 25-8, 25-23.

The win secured the top-ranked Chiefs a place in the semifinal game this Monday against East Meadow.

When watching the beginning of the match, you'd have thought this was just business as usual for Massapequa. The Chiefs were a well-oiled machine, and their near-flawless teamwork easily enabled them to snatch the first two games away from Herricks, 25-13, 25-8.

However, in the third game, the Highlanders displayed a fire they had been previously lacking; their intensity translated into more cohesive teamwork, and for the first time in the match, they actually overtook the Chiefs on the scoreboard, 15-18.

Massapequa battled back, propelled by the serve of Victoria Maffeo, and reclaimed the lead. The two teams battled neck-and-neck for the remainer of the game, with the Chiefs claiming the close 25-23 win on a Joanne Josephson kill shot, winning the match.

Massapequa standouts included Samantha Berna, Lauren Van Buren, and Ashley Gubista.

Chiefs' head coach CarolAnn Habeeb-Kiel had little to say about the win, preferring to let her team's actions do the talking.

"We're excited about playoffs," she said. "And we're looking forward to going to the semis."

Ashley Gubista found the Highlanders' late comeback to be a learning experience.

"It just lets us know that we have to work harder for every point," she said. "We can't ever let people come back, because they were very capable of coming back and beating us the third game, and then we would have gone to a fourth and maybe a fifth...we're in playoffs now, so everyone's 0-0. We all need to work our way up to Counties."

Keri Giaquinto felt the Chiefs had dodged a bullet.

"It got too close for comfort," she said. "We all knew that we had to step it up, and bring it even more than we had been. We pulled it out, but we're going to be bringing it even harder next week."

Samantha Berna's morale was through the roof after the win.

"I think that we did really well," she said. "The last couple of points we should have just finished it off and played the way we played the first couple of games, but overall I think we did well...the next game we're going to come out harder and stronger than ever."

Massapequa, 15-0, faces East Meadow at Clarke high school on Monday, November 8th at 6:30pm to decide the Nassau Class AA semifinals.