Kennedy Boys Volleyball Looks to Repeat as County Champions

As far as expectations for this upcoming season go, you can label the Kennedy High School boys volleyball team a victim of its own success.

The team set the bar as high as you can possibly can after finishing last year 15-1 and proceeding to win the Nassau County Championship. It may have been a year ago, but it's something that coach Allen Ma will not soon forget.

"It was great," Ma said. "It was the culmination of hard work, team unity, and [coach Dennis Ringel] and I worked really hard with these kids over the past couple of years to build a team and build a program together. So to win it all was just a great feeling."

However, Ma insists that there are still plenty of things that the team has to work on if they plan to repeat as champions.

"There is always a lot to improve on," Ma said. "We need to play better defensively, and serve more aggressively."

The team has four returning seniors from last year: Brendan Mills, Jon Meshnich, Jesse Forman and Ryan Pastuch.  Ma praised the leadership of those four, particularly Mills.

"Brendan is captain of the team and is a returning all-tournament player in last year's playoffs," Ma said. "He was outstanding during the playoffs and is a returning all-conference player."

The team lost three seniors from last year, all of whom were all-county players. Despite this, Mills believes the team is still just as strong.  

"I expect us to be just as good as we were last year," Mills said. "For everybody who's left, somebody has came in and stepped up in their place. So we should do really well and hopefully take another championship."

Mills was selected to be the team captain this year; a role he takes very seriously.

"It's my job to make sure everybody is giving 100 percent in every practice," Mills said. "I make sure that no one is sitting on the sidelines twiddling their thumbs and that everybody is doing the best that they can."

Jesse Forman, also a returning senior, is optimistic about the team's chances this year but emphasized that it will take a lot of hard work to make up for the loss of three key players from last year.

"We definitely need to improve our defense from last year," Forman said. "We lost three seniors last year that were the heart and soul of this team so it's going be tough without them. They were all-county players and people are we going to have to fill their shoes. But if we work hard in practice I think we can finish strong and hopefully repeat this year."

One of these younger players expected to fill those shoes and step into the limelight is junior Dylan Simonson.  Ma spoke highly of his abilities and of the role he played last year in winning a championship.

"Dylan is our junior libero who did a nice job last year and was part of the championship team," Ma said. "So hopefully he can continue to grow as a player and continue with his success."

The team will begin its quest to defend its championship title in a few weeks when they open up the season on April 8 when they visit Roslyn. Kennedy's home opener takes place a week later on April 15 when they face West Hempstead.