While many other local high school girls volleyball teams were competing in matches before the end of August, Baldwinsville waited, knowing that it had done all of the hard off-season work that’s made the program a dynasty.
Fueling that work for 2017 was the fact that, each of the last two seasons, the Bees followed up yet another Section III Class AA title with defeats to Shenendehowa in the regional round, a fate B’ville badly wants to change this fall.
At last, the Bees debuted last Thursday night at Nottingham, and nearly got a shutout in a 25-2 opening set before taking the next two sets by 25-4 and 25-9 margins. More than a set’s worth of points came from aces – 33 of them – with Katie Welcher earning 12 aces and Summer McClintic adding seven aces.
Althena Norton led B’ville with 10 kills, while Dana Prokop had six kills, plus four aces. Kristen Liu added four kills and Claire McAllister three kills as Maddie Stone recorded five assists.
Contrast the dominance on the girls side with the consistency on the boys side with Baldwinsville volleyball, who wins plenty each season but, again, finds itself chasing Cicero-North Syracuse for sectional glory.
This fall in boys volleyball, eight teams – B’ville, C-NS, Liverpool, Central Square, Fayetteville-Manlius, Oswego, Jamesville-DeWitt and Syracuse – are together in the Salt City Athletic Conference, which means there are 14 league matches, two against each opponent.
It just so happened that the Bees opened with the most difficult assignment of all, facing C-NS on the Northstars’ home court, and lost in three sets by scores of 25-17, 25-14 and 25-18.
Tom Higman managed 19 assists, passing it to Nate Johns, who had eight kills, and Tyler Aiello, who got seven kills. Luc Jerome added four kills and Dan Cerqua finished with seven digs. C-NS featured Josh Bigford on its front line picking up 15 kills as Tristen Cummings earned 22 assists.
