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Andover’s Exceptional Defense Leads to 3-0 Victory Over Northfield Mount Hermon

With blazing hits from Luke Gordos ’21 and the combined force of Violet Enes ’21 and Brooklyn Wirt ’21, Andover Volleyball defeated Northfield Mount Hermon in 3 sets this past Saturday. Andover’s record now stands at 1-1. According to Alex Mitchell ’22, the team was working on incorporating everyone into the offense and getting inventive with its plays in the practices leading up to the game. “[We worked on] aggression, we had to see the ball and get ahead of it. Also creativity, for example, we set the libero way more than expected. Our libero is kind of short so he doesn’t look like a big attacker, but he kept flying out of the back row. So that was definitely something we were working on,” said Mitchell. Despite the preparations made, the energy levels were low as there were no fans to cheer on the team, according to Mitchell. Mitchell said, “The energy was actually terrible because there were no fans and that’s because NMH requested no fans. And we are usually a team that feeds off the energy of the crowd, but our bench did a good job of being very loud.” According to Zane Olmstead ’21, Andover’s communication and consistency were definitely on point, but the team occasionally found itself coming up short in important moments. Olmstead said, “Sometimes under pressure, we were not as good as we could have been, but I see that changing in the future with improvements being made to my pregame playlist.” While the team fell behind in the second set, Mitchell’s serves were able to bring Andover back into the game, according to Henrique Chamon ’21. He said, “We were down 14- 22 in the second set, and we made up a few points getting us to 20-24, but then it was Alex ‘A Money Mitch’ Mitchell’s turn to serve and he was a monster… Some players on NMH were chirping about his game glasses, but what they didn’t know was that it allows him to see who the weakest player on the other team is. ‘A Money Mitch’ was able to methodically choose who to serve [to] because of that, and this gave us some nice aces bringing us a 26-24 dub in that set.” As the season progresses, the team hopes to improve its communication and energy and also stray away from predictability, according to Mitchell. Mitchell said, “We got [Phillips Exeter Academy] next week so we’re definitely going to be working on communication and our offense. Also our unpredictability, we want to be sort of like an eight-ball where you never know what you’re going to get. We can’t just set the same person every time; we’ll get predictable.” With Olmstead’s addition of DJ Khaled’s new album to his pregame playlist, the team hopes to see a strong performance as it takes on Exeter away this Saturday.