A great offensive and defensive effort propelled the Andover Girl’s Volleyball team to a solid 3-0 win over Northfield Mt. Hermon last Saturday. After the long bus ride out to N.M.H., the team came out very strong and led the first game 7-0, thanks to excellent serving by Dawson Joyce-Mendive ’07. After a late push, N.M.H. narrowed the score to 22-23, but Lindsay Maroney ’07 served out the game, giving Andover the win, 30-22. Excellent defense by Melissa Yan ’10 and Sarah Beattie ’07 helped shut down N.M.H’s offensive attack. With the help of Atima Lui’s ‘08 acrobatic plays, Andover took the second game 30-18. The team hoped to use the third game to substitute in some new players, but N.M.H refused to cooperate, putting up a tough fight throughout the match. Whenever Andover looked to extend the lead to more than 5 points, N.M.H consistently closed the gap. Andover created leads of 27-21 and 29-21, and the game seemed to be under control. However, N.M.H stormed back to narrow the score to 28-29. Calmly, Andover won the last point and closed out the match with a 30-28 final-game victory. Several great individual performances helped keep Andover’s unbeaten record alive. Captain Carpenter had an impressive 32 assists and was 15-17 serving on the match. Joyce-Mendive led the team in hits, going 23-26 with 18 kills, as well. Also contributing were Lui, with 9 kills, and Isabelle Engelsted ’09, who went 9 for 11 serving on the day. On Wednesday, the team traveled to Cushing to take on the Purple Penguins, who boasted a record of 4-6 prior to the match. Andover won the first game 30-12. After both teams traded points, Andover’s lead was 14-12, and Sarah Beattie stepped up to serve. After a great sequence of serves for Beattie, the lead was extended to 20-12. Melissa Yan finished off the game by serving for four unanswered points, and the game ended with Andover on top 30-17. Cushing took advantage of 16 Andover service and hitting errors by developing some offense of their own. The game ended with Cushing on top 15-30, but Andover still led 2-1 overall. The starting unit used excellent teamwork and their superb ability to track down difficult balls to take an early command of the game. The variation of Andover attack balls threw off the Cushing defense, and the end result was a 30-10 Andover win.
