3/25 – Andover: 3, St. John’s Prep: 1
Boys Volleyball (1–0) opened its season with a 3–1 home win against St. John’s Prep (St. John’s) in a scrimmage this Wednesday. While the team is still ironing out its chemistry with a new roster, it showed coordination across serve reception and offense.
A strong serve reception, one in which a player can steadily receive a serve and deliver it to the setter, sets up the tone in volleyball. Ren Oh ’28 noted how the team’s focus on improving serving directly shaped its execution of the win.
“Yesterday, we worked on our serve reception, which helped because you can’t attack if you can’t set, and you can’t set without getting a good pass from the serve receiver. Without a good serve reception at the start, it just throws off the tempo of the entire game,” said Oh ’28.
The team also maintained its momentum, building confidence quickly and turning small runs into bigger stretches of control. At the same time, there were moments where breakdowns in awareness and coordination exposed gaps in their defense. Oh ’28 described challenges with covering the middle of the court.
He continued, “I think once we get going, it’s hard to get us to stop… we’re really good at keeping the momentum. A weakness of ours was in the back row. There’s a spot in the center of the court where most opponents will tip, and we had problems getting the ball up in that area. It requires a lot of communication between three defensive players, and that was throwing us off a lot.”
Kai Szanton ’26 highlighted several contributors on offense, and elaborated on the impact of serving on the match’s outcome.
“[A key player was] Jeremy [Woodley ’26], probably our strongest hitter. Another one [was] our Co-Captain, Ray [Williams ’26], who is a good service receiver and has good communication on defense. The last one would probably be Justin Puno [’26], as he stepped up for us today. The ones that stood out to me the most were probably our serve runs, as every set that we won, we won off a serve. It was really entertaining. I feel like we’re a team that gets hype very easily, so whenever you have a big swing, you feel the energy on the court shift,” said Szanton.
Will Oh ’26 emphasized the importance of upperclassmen supporting younger players, given the team’s composition.
“Our team is Senior-heavy, so we have a lot of experience to share and impart with fellow underclassmen. From last season, we lost around 5 or 4 Seniors, so the change across the team hasn’t been too dramatic. We hope that even though we have some more seniors that will leave after this year, we’ll be able to impart the same knowledge onto the underclassmen that stay,” said Oh ’26.
Oh ’26 further reflected on areas for improvement after the team’s first game, specifically with regard to team chemistry.
“A lot of players haven’t played with each other for a long time, so it’s difficult to see how to react behaviorally from one player to another. If I know that one player tends to pass it a bit faster, to the right, a bit farther to the left, or wants the ball set higher or lower, it’s easy to gauge what I have to do. With more practice and games we have, it’ll be easier to find that groove or that flow state,” said Oh ’26.
Boys Volleyball will face Lawrence High (Lawrence) in a scrimmage on Friday, followed by a doubleheader against Choate and EF Academy on Saturday.
