Girls Volleyball defeated Lowell High School 3-0 in the second game of the DIII NorCal playoffs on Thursday, Nov. 14. MVHS took an early lead, winning the first set 25-17. Despite LHS’s attempt to close the gap, MVHS was able to keep up the pressure throughout the rest of the game, winning both the second and the third set with a score of 25-16 to take the victory.
Junior and setter Chloe Chen says that MVHS’ strong defensive performance during the game can be attributed to studying film from LHS’ past games. Head coach Nadia Lan agrees, stating that this allowed the team to predict how Lowell would play and adjust their strategy accordingly.
“We did a film session with the whole team to study the opponents’ tendencies,” Lan said. “We noticed that they like to tip a lot, so we focused a lot on covering all the tips, which our team did really well.”
Chen says that the team prepared for the game by practicing specific drills to adapt their defense to LHS’ tall middle blocker. Despite this, both Chen and Lan believe that the team could improve their ability to receive serves.
“I think the area that can be improved right now is the short serve,” Lan said. “Even though we’re a good passing team, every time the short serve comes we just lob it, so that anticipation can be better.”
Lan says that the team spirit carried with them before and throughout the game contributed to their strong performance. She says the team danced as a warmup and sang karaoke before the game to loosen their mood and prepare for the game. Chen agrees, stating that the team had high energy throughout the game which allowed them to maintain momentum and bounce back from occasional mistakes.
“When we were high in energy, we were able to stay in the lead,” Chen said. “When we lost a couple points and we were down, they took the momentum and took the lead. I feel like as long as we encourage each other, we’ll be able to get it back.”
