Varsity Volleyball: Knights Hope to Knock Off More Rust in Urbana

By Ben Spector
Winning After MidKnight

 

When the Middletown High School Knights Varsity Volleyball team took on the Liberty High School Lions in the first match of the season on Tuesday September 6^th, the Knights definitely showed rust at times, with multiple service errors and miscommunications causing Middletown more trouble than they had bargained for and making things a lot more difficult on the Knights then they should have been.

Middletown will try to knock off some more rust when they head across the county to take on the Urbana High School Hawks from Urbana High School at 7:00 p.m. in an early season Central Maryland Conference match-up.

Middletown struggled at times during the Liberty game as the crispness that is usually associated with a volleyball team late in the season just wasn’t there for the Knights in their season debut as miscommunications and service errors played a big impact in why the match against Liberty ended up going into five sets.

Through the first two sets the Knights looked to be in fine shape but Liberty would take the third set and then multiple service errors and miscommunications would end up costing the Knights, especially last in the fourth set as they would drop that extended fourth set but would thankfully would cover up their mistakes by winning in the fifth set to take the match from Liberty.

One combination that did not have any rust on it during the Liberty game was the dynamic duo of Middletown senior setter Kelsey Buckley and senior outside hitter Erika Pritchard as both Buckley and Pritchard were in fine form for the Knights, and were one of the biggest reasons that the Knights managed to outlast Liberty in the end.

Pritchard would record 15 kills for the Knights and out of those 15 kills, 12 came off the hands of a smooth Buckley set as it appeared that the two had been playing together for the whole summer as the timing between the two was as smooth as it had ever been.

In that regard Buckley and Pritchard will be the key for the Knights this year if they are to go far and do well this season. When Pritchard is hitting the ball like she was during the Liberty game, with pace and speed that is almost unmatched in the state of Maryland than Pritchard becomes one of the most dangerous weapons that the Knights have had in program history.

But, like any good superhero Pritchard has a superhero in the diminutive Buckley as Buckley’s sets make Pritchard’s life very easy as all the Maryland commit has to do is jump, swing, and deposit Buckley’s set somewhere onto the uncovered floor on the opponent’s side of the court.

If Pritchard and Buckley are the Batman and Robin team of the Knights, than Middletown also has pretty good League of Nations surrounding it and they’ll need all the heroic help that they can get when they take on Urbana, as a win against the Hawks could help spring the Knights season.

It almost had a similar effect last year as the Knights managed to take down the Hawks early in the season but the difference between last year and what the Knights hope will happen this year, is that after the Urbana win the Knights fizzled.

That Hawks are not the same team as the Knights played last year as the Hawks have gotten tougher and are off to a good start as they took down Gaithersburg in three straight sets.

The Hawks though have not had as stressful a game and they don’t have as dynamic a duo as the Knights do, a duo that has removed some rust for the Knights.