Well, North Rockland and Suffern both won their Thursday matches going into the big Friday faceoff.

The Red Raiders defeated Clarkstown South in four games today.  They will host Suffern tomorrow.  Suffern defeated Clarkstown North today in five games, struggling to find consistency but playing very well when on.

Suffern won the first matchup this season with North Rockland in five games with a 30-28 score in the fifth game.  That was at Suffern.

Nastasha Pollard had 39 kills in that match for North Rockland.   She had 25 against Clarkstown South today, and there was one less game in that match.  I expect big production from her, but we’ll see if it can match that of Suffern’s various contributors.

And don’t count either of the Clarkstowns out of the section championship.  They’ve been trailing North Rockland and Suffern all year, but they could close the gap and beat those teams anytime.  It would be interesting if the playoffs ended up being the venue for that kind of upset.

Well, the blogs on our website have been down for about a week, as you have already noticed I’m sure. I didn’t realize they came back up last night, which is why I didn’t post anything about the John Jay-Haldane match.

Tonight I went over to Clarkstown North and saw the second regular season meeting of the Clarkstowns — Rams vs. Vikings.

South won 3-0, avenging a 3-2 loss on their home floor in the last meeting.

Melanie Kartzmer had 15 kills for the Vikings, including five in a row to give South a 20-13 lead in the third set.

Not much to say about this one that I didn’t already write in the story.  North had a sloppy match, so you can’t tell too much from today, but South is looking very good.  I wouldn’t count them out of their rematch with North Rockland on Thursday.  Clarkstown North will have to be much smoother on Thursday if they’re going to win their rematch with Suffern.

Tomorrow I’ll be covering Croton-Harmon at Westlake. The Wildcats are 14-0 and cruising.

Then Thursday I’ll be doing the Clarkstown North-Suffern match on Thursday while my colleague Dan Marra does Clarkstown South-North Rockland. Or is it the other way around?

On Friday I’ll be covering the Suffern-North Rockland match. I know, that’s a lot of games involving those four teams, but they’ve been having such great games so far this season.

I… am… tired. I had to put together some volleyball notebook stuff before heading out to the match today because last night was a complete bust (it was supposed to be a slow night at the office and I was supposed to do a lot of catching up, but it didn’t work out that way on either count).

So my brain is working a little slowly right now. Fortunately, I’m familiar with that feeling and I can work through it.  We had a big day today.  First things first:

Hen Hud was dominant as ever in their 3-0 win over Fox Lane tonight. They started with a big run to take charge in the first game, and they finished up with a big run to close the third game nice and early, 25-13.

Though Hen Hud looked like the better team throughout, it really wasn’t that bad of a loss for Fox Lane. The second game showed real potential for a rivalry (which is unfortunate since these teams only meet once in the regular season). That game was dead even all the way through before Fox Lane jumped out to a 22-19 lead with three straight points (which was a big run for the second set). Hen Hud called timeout at that point, and when the Sailors came back out they scored six straight points to win it.

It’s hard to pick out a star player who did more for Hen Hud than everyone else. Ragin Jackson (pictured above) had 11 kills and 13 blocks, and the blocks were arguably the biggest part of this match as Hen Hud effectively neutralized Fox Lane’s attack for long stretches. Courtney Desmond had seven aces, and she served for 12 straight points to give Hen Hud a 23-11 lead in the third game. Nicole Tamburri had 35 assists and ran the offense beautifully as usual. Kami Nethersole had 11 kills and was the first person who really asserted herself in this match with some powerful kills in the first game.

On Fox Lane’s side, Nora Rugova struggled early on with Hen Hud’s block, but she got around it eventually and finished with 15 kills. The speed at which she learned what she needed to do against Hen Hud is very promising for the Foxes. Rugova is also a great defensive player, apparently. No one told me that, and this is the first time I’ve seen her play. She had 11 digs, and some of them looked extremely difficult.

Allison Terlizzi (right) played very well at libero for Fox Lane, as Hen Hud coach Diane Swertfager pointed out. She had 17 digs.

Let’s see, what else happened today. Ah, yes. Pelham came back from being down 2-0 to beat Ardsley. My new colleague Dan Marra covered that one, so I don’t personally have a lot of details on it. I’ll talk to Dan and get cracking on that tomorrow. Nope, I’m off tomorrow. I’ll get cracking on that Thursday. It will be nice to have something to put up on the blog later in the week, because I’m not getting out to cover any more games until next week. Two in a day, and that’s it.

North Rockland beat John Jay 3-0 today as well.  Nastasha Pollard had 30 kills.  In a three game match, that’s pretty amazing.  But I believe it.

And Pearl River beat Albertus Magnus right after I wrote a notebook feature on how well Albertus is doing this season. Fantastic.

More on this match later. I’m on deadline at the moment…

The score of the fifth game of the Suffern-North Rockland match was 30-28 Suffern. It’s been a heck of a week in Rockland volleyball. I’ve got to get my story in for the paper, but I’ll put more info on here a little later…
——————
(the next morning)

Clearly I got wrapped up in other things and forgot about my inadequate blog update last night. Here’s some more:

Well, Suffern was pretty elated after this one, understandably. I don’t know how long it’s been since they’ve beaten North Rockland. The Red Raiders have been pretty dominant in recent years. Clarkstown North pulled out a 3-0 win against them last season, but I think that one was more of a fluke (no offense, Rams). This match was dead even from the very start (which is strange for Suffern…they have a hard time starting out strong), except for the fourth game in which North Rockland pulled away and won 25-16. The game scores were 21-25, 25-23, 25-23, 16-25, 30-28. I said the Clarkstown North-Clarkstown South match on Tuesday was about as close as you could get in volleyball, but Suffern and North Rockland one-upped that 29-27 game five score. North Rockland was playing pretty well as a team, but Nastasha Pollard was really keeping them in it at times. No matter where the ball was set or where the Mounties were positioned, she could turn it into a kill if she put her mind to it. And she did it 39 times. Christina Giordano came up big for North Rockland as well. Suffern did a lot to prevent the Pollard situation from getting completely out of hand. They played good defense at the net and in the back row, really putting together a team effort. Everybody chipped in to this one, which is what I guess they will have to do from now on when they face the Red Raiders. After North Rockland was able to close out the first game, it seemed like the second game was all about Suffern proving to themselves that they could win. They had proven they could play pretty evenly with the Raiders, but they had to finish one off to really feel like they could win the match. Rebecca Aarons came in to serve when the Mounties finally got to 24-23 in the second game, and she aced it. Suffern celebrated like they had won the whole match. Which reminds me – their celebration when they had actually won the whole match was as if they had won the section championship. But it’s so early, you almost have to cringe for the undefeated Mounties, waiting for fate to catch up. They’ve got another North Rockland match, two against Clarkstown South, one more against Clarkstown North before the playoffs even get started. But considering how the new girls have been doing so far and how they’ve improved with every match, that just might mean that Suffern has plenty of time to get better before the playoffs. Sophomore Jenna Hrycyk had a solid day yesterday with 13 kills, as did Kristin Schmidt, who had 18 kills and seven blocks. We must remember North Rockland got a lot better as last season progressed, and I have no doubt that this match made them even stronger. Well, this certainly makes Class AA pretty interesting, not that it wasn’t already. Class A and Class B have big rivalry matches on Tuesday that we’ll be covering. Fox Lane is at Hen Hud, and Ardsley is at Pelham. Check those out if you can.

Suffern and North Rockland will play each other tomorrow at Suffern, and they each tuned up for the match by playing another league rival today. I won’t leave you in suspense. Suffern lost its first game to Clarkstown North 25-18 before winning the next three 25-20, 25-19, 25-20. I covered that one, then found out when I got back to the office that North Rockland lost its first two game against Clarkstown South tonight before winning in five.

Sophomore Kristin Schmidt (above, 13) had another great match for Suffern with 14 kills and eight blocks. Number 7 in the above picture is also a sophomore, by the way — Cat Darling of Clarkstown North, who played well with six kills.

Some people on Suffern said (and I’m sure North Rockland would agree) that they were glad to have lost the first set of their match today, getting the wake up call out of the way. North Rockland got an even harsher wake up call being brough to the brink by the Vikings.

And the poor Vikings! Two losses this week in game 5. They dropped a five gamer to Clarkstown North on Tuesday. Still, they’ve got a lot to be proud of having competed evenly with teams like the Rams and the Red Raiders. South coach John Pardy mentioned to me that the AA league that has all the Rockland teams (North Rockland, CNorth, CSouth, Suffern, and Ramapo) was the only league in any class in which every team made the playoffs last season. That league seems just as impressive and competitive this season.

I’m excited to find out what happens tomorrow between North Rockland and Suffern. It will be my first glimpse of North Rockland this season.

I went up to Croton-Harmon at 4:30, because I forgot they play most of their varsity matches after the JV. Luckily it was a beautiful day so I went and got some pizza, then hung out on the bleachers next to the baseball field and watched some kids play flag football for a while.

It was also lucky that the photographer knew the match was at six (Erin set up the photo for this one as one of her last acts before leaving so I didn’t get a chance to mess it up myself).

When the varsity match got started, it was all Kelly Scanlon (right, 2) all the time. She would probably be an indispensable starter on any team in the section with her defense and hitting, and tonight she came through whenever her team needed her.

Down 23-20 in the first game, she had three kills in a row to tie it up, then Chelsea Hammerschmidt finished it off with two aces. In the second game the Bobcats were up 20-15, but their offense had gone flat. So Scanlon started racking up kills from the back row. She had three as Byram scored five of the next six points to win it.

Croton-Harmon won game three 25-16 before Byram Hills closed it out with a 25-13 win in game four.

Junior Annie Manes (above, 11) had another solid performance for Croton-Harmon with nine kills. These teams meet again at Byram Hills on Oct. 19.

Tomorrow I’ve got Suffern and Clarkstown North, which should be fun. North Rockland at Suffern on Friday will complete my week.

For some reason this post disappeared shortly after it was initially posted last night.  I just discovered the reason and fixed it.  Sorry for the delay.  Here it is:

Several people were infected with volleyball fever tonight at Clarkstown South high school. Most of the cases were limited to the bleacher area, but several football and tennis players who just happened to be walking through the gym during the fifth game of the Clarkstown North-Clarkstown South match also exhibited symptoms, including screaming, clapping, stomping, and slight sweating.

Andrea Kalter (above, 12) had the final kill to help North beat South 3-2 in a great rivalry match. The finish was as tight as can be, with the Rams taking a 29-27 win in the fifth game. The fever was starting to take hold a little in the fourth game, in which there were 11 ties and eight lead changes in the early-going, but it really took hold after the Vikings won to force a fifth game.

I caught it, too. And not a moment too soon. Tonight I officially take over the entire volleyball beat as Erin, erstwhile Westchester/Putnam writer, departs.

It will be just like the old days — last year I had the entire volleyball beat as well. But my first match last year was Hen Hud-Fox Lane on September 13, so I had the volleyball fever all season. I’m catching it a little late this year.

Clarkstown North won the last meeting between these teams in the quarterfinals of last year’s AA section quarterfinals. That match was 3-0, so it seems the Vikings’ prospects are improving.

Melanie Kartzmer was dominant for South with a match-high 24 kills. When the Vikings were making a run in the fifth game to come from down 23-19 to a 24-24 tie, Kartzmer had two kills in a row to make it 24-23 and force a Clarkstown North timeout. It was one of the high points of the match as far as energy is concerned.

I’ll be seeing Clarkstown North again on Thursday against Suffern at home, and then I’ll have North Rockland and Suffern on Friday. I’ll be jumping right in on my Westchester/Putnam volleyball duties tomorrow with the Byram Hills vs. Croton-Harmon match.

For now I’ve got to get some sleep, because I can actually feel my immune system breaking down. I was out all of last week with health issues completely unrelated to the cold that everyone around me seems to be catching. Now I might be catching that very cold. Remember to check out the story in tomorrow’s paper (Oh, also, my Rockland notebook runs tomorrow, with a little info about Pearl River’s changing luck and an important Rockland rivalry win they enjoyed recently over Tappan Zee).