MONTICELLO – The Liberty Redhawks were no match for the Monticello Panthers as they redeemed themselves from a road loss earlier in the week during league play against Port Jervis. The Lady Panthers put on a bounce back performance winning in straight sets against the Redhawks on Friday evening.  Looking very alert and locked in during Friday’s match, Monticello capitalized off strong serving from their upperclassmen and trivial mistakes made on returns and passing from the Redhawks throughout the entire game. They won the first set by their greatest margin of any other set in the game, 14 points. That was in part due to the eight aces they put on the board in that initial set.  Opening the game with an ace was senior Reiley Schloicka followed by senior Julissa Velez who raked in 4 aces alone, 3 of which came consecutively and forced a Liberty timeout at the 8-2 mark.  Junior Isabella Sepulveda and senior Ava Williams got in on the first set ace action as well, respectively pulling in a combined 3 aces.  

Not only did the Lady Panthers serve strong to start the game, their communication and passing on offense and awareness at the net on defense shined through. Twice the crowd witnessed perfect passing to set up flawless kills, one early in the set by junior Genevieve DeSimone and the other in the middle of the set by Julissa Velez. Making the Redhawks pay for passing errors was also a key factor for the big margin set by the Lady Panthers. Reiley Schloicka made the first impressive slam at the middle of the net while freshmen Aissa Williams earned a block and impressively followed up with her own slam at the net after a Redhawks passing mishap.  Head Coach Sierra Smith joyfully refers to those slam opportunities at the net as “Happy Birthday Balls” and was very proud to see that her team was being much more aggressive about attacking those plays at the net. “I felt like against Beacon we were being very passive on overpassed balls, and we worked on those Happy Birthday Balls in practice, going up and swinging at the ball.”

The next two sets were a little more competitive, but ultimately more kills and slams at the nets solidified the win for Monticello. In addition to their win over Liberty, the Panthers defeated Seward on Tuesday  in three straight sets to improve their record to 5-1.