SAUGUS — On Monday evening, the Saugus volleyball team hosted the Magicians of Marblehead. Marblehead (8-4) made its presence felt with a dominant 3-0 sweep of the Sachems (6-8).
Marblehead came out hot in the first set going up 14-5, midway through the first set. Then Saugus began to fight back with help from Mara Faiella and Olivia Chaisson.
Saugus made some incredible plays like an amazing effort on the ball off the ceiling for a Sachems point, but it was not enough for them to stop the Magicians winning the opening set, 25-21.
“Our kids started off slow today, we struggled to play as a team and we had a conversation after. We were able to pull out that second set and said, ‘Where do we want to be right now? What do we want to do?’, I think the girls turned it around today and finished off really strong,” Marblehead coach Killeen Miller said.
In set two it came down the wire, but Marblehead’s Greta Sachs (13 kills, 5 aces) and Megan Parkman came up clutch in a, 29-27, nailbiter to win set two.
In the final set, Marblehead put an end to the match with a commanding 25-15 set win.
“Marblehead has always been a tough, well-put-together team, their coach does a lot of offseason coaching and she’s a phenomenal coach. [The] First set we were right there in it with them. The second set we kind of just threw it, we were up by 11 or 12 points on them and we ended up bringing it into overtime and losing by two,” Saugus coach MiKayla Niles said. “The third set to go down and lose by 10, and losing like that after the first two sets is obviously not what we wanted. It’s a rebuilding year like I’ve said, we have three returners, we have had some ups and downs, we are 6-8 now and we have to put it together.”
After a tough loss, Niles had a simple message for her team.
“Keep your heads up, don’t be upset about the outcome, you worked your tails off and obviously it’s not the outcome that we wanted, we get back in the gym tomorrow, we will critique a couple of things and we will continue to go from there,” Niles said.
For Marblehead, there were a few players who stuck out according to Miller.
“Our passers stood out to me. Our offense pulled it together. We were making a ton of errors, Lila Moniz came out really strong for us and started taking care of the ball,” Miller said. “I think our defense started to communicate better. Megan Parkman stepped up in a really big way, [she] calmed our passers down. Sidney Faris was able to do just the same and once those pieces fell into place it worked a lot better.”
Owen Finn is a student at Endicott College studying journalism
