Sports
Tolland Volleyball Wins Fifth in a Row
Eagles sweep season series with Fermi with 3-0 win at Tolland High School.
For Tolland, Wednesday’s 3-0 win against Fermi was the final test before a challenging stretch next week.
For the Falcons, the match showed that if they’re going to improve in the second half of the year, they’ll need to up their communication on the court.
“They need to talk to each other, I can only say it so many times,” Fermi head coach Alex Pyznar said of the Falcons.
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With the sweep, (25-9, 25-17- 25-7) the Eagles took the season series 2-0 without losing a match to Fermi.
Wednesday’s game was highlighted by the strong serving of the Eagles’ Kelsey Lewis and Kristin Schatzlein.
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The pair helped Tolland pull away in the first set, as the Eagles closed on a 10-1 run, and then Lewis sealed the game with a rocket on the final play.
“They’ve got good strong jump serves, and when they get going, its tough on the other guys,” Tolland head coach Ken Brown said of Lewis and Schatzlein. “They both have strong arms that generate good top spin.”
The win was Tolland’s (8-2) fifth in a row, and sets them up for their next two games against undefeated RHAM and South Windsor.
With that in mind, Brown said he incorporated several new plays against Fermi to help prep the Eagles for next week.
“We ran some quicks and slides, techniques that we are going to need next week,” Brown said. “It moves the pace around and keeps the defense off balance,” he said, adding that the Eagle’s inexperienced setters have started to become comfortable enough to run these plays.
For Fermi, there were spurts on consistency, but simply not enough to keep pace with a team like Tolland.
“Playing a team that’s ranked in the state, it’s hard”, Pyznar said of the Falcons’ lapses. “One bad pass and their confidence goes down. They over exert themselves and next thing you know we’re down by ten and we have to do all this work to catch back up.”
Lauren Barallari had 15 digs for Fermi, while Adrianna Pliszka added four blocks. Monika Kucharczyk had 19 digs. Fermi (2-6) is back in action next Tuesday at 6 p.m. at Northwest Catholic, while Tolland travels to RHAM next Wednesday at 5:30 p.m.
