Vikings Volleyball Falls to Massapequa

On late Friday afternoon, it came to an end. The Schreiber varsity volleyball team's winning streak came to an abrupt halt at the hands of a powerful Massapequa squad. If the Vikings needed a wake-up call, as coach Maria Giamanco said after their last win over Syosset, this was it — complete with a screaming, stomping contingent of Massapequa fans in the stands in Schreiber High School to serve notice that there is a higher level of competition to be reckoned with. With a potent attack and a defense that yielded precious little, the Chiefs took three straight games by scores of 25-22, 26-24 and 25-9.

Yet the Vikings held firm, at least in the first two games. The matched the Chiefs spike for spike, block for block, and intensity for intensity.

"We gave a great effort in the first two games," Michael Murphy said of the team's close game one and game two losses. "There were a couple of things we have to keep in mind, there were a couple of touches here and there that we missed. If those had gone the other way we might have won those games."

But as close — and as good — as those first two games were, there was never any doubt about who would prevail. The Chiefs were on fire, and their talent was too great, for the gutsy Vikings. By the end, the Chiefs' dominance was complete. The Vikings were unable to penetrate the Massapequa blockers at the net, and scored just nine points in the final game of the match.

Ben Adler said that he thought the Chiefs were the Vikings first real competition thus far this season. "They were our first real opposition," Adler said. "We're going to build up on this, and learn from the mistakes that we made. It was good to get a feel for the sorts of teams we'll be facing later in the year."

Senior tri-captain Adam Epstein echoed Adler's sentiment. "They were the most competitive team we've seen so far," Epstein said. "We have to match their intensity."

It was those small technical mistakes, though, that concerned Giamanco. "We made them look really good," she said. Speaking to Adler, the coach told her player that the team's front row needs to communicate with each other better. Adler agreed.  "We felt the frustration of not getting good hits in the front row," he responded.

Giamanco said losing this match should help the team learn what it needs to work on in order to thrive as the season progresses. "What hurt us most was not blocking, not sticking to blocking assignments," Giamanco said. "And they executed everything they needed to execute. We haven't been challenged too much so far this year. We had a nice match with Uniondale earlier, but nothing like this."

Then, finding a positive note on a disappointing day, Giamanco said, "This identifies what we need to do."