Wednesday,
September 24, 2014
By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director
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Kirsten Kaiser had 9 of her 11 kills in the first game and six in the last seven points as N/V Old Tappan handed N/V Demarest its first loss of the season (25-21, 25-16) on Tuesday afternoon. |
DEMAREST – The opening set of Tuesday's battle between not only rival neighbors, but also two of the best teams in Bergen County and in the state, was, as expected, close. Neither Northern Valley/Old Tappan nor Northern Valley/Demarest had more than a three point lead through the first 40 points and when the game got to that plateau, it was tied at 20-20. In other words, the all-important first set was just begging for someone to take over and put an end to it.
Enter Old Tappan's Kirsten Kaiser, the junior middle blocker who just crushed it. Of Kaiser's 11 kills in the match, nine of them game in the opening set an five of them came in the final six points of it. She also threw in a block and was directly responsible for all six points in the 6-2 run that gave Old Tappan the lead.
Behind Kaiser's dominance at the net and junior setter Kelly Brogan's decisions to keep feeding the hot hand, the Golden Knights pulled out the first set and then carried the hard-earned momentum right into Set 2 in a 25-21, 25-16 win on the road in Demarest.
“I feel like me and my setter, Kelly Brogan, have really developed a chemistry over the past month and we are really in tune with each other,” said Kaiser. “And it was all adrenaline. Everybody talks so much about Old Tappan/Demarest and we try to play it cool and not worry who is on the other side of the net, but there was definitely a lot of adrenaline because of who we were playing.”
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Hailey Riede was a force on the outside for Demarest (5-1). |
It's impossible to predict what will happen when the two state powers meet on the court even after the ball is put in play as the differences between them are slight. It looked like an early three-point run in the opening set might have represented what would have been the turning point as Demarest went from a 4-4 tie to a 7-4 lead when Veronica Corcoran stuffed an overpass at the net. Although Old Tappan was able to tie the game five ties at 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17, 18 and 19, Old Tappan was never able to forge in front until Kaiser got hot late.
Hailey Riede's kill down the line from the outside gave Demarest a 19-18 lead, but a bad pass allowed Old Tappan to tie the game and Kaiser's tip into open space allowed the Golden Knights to be the first to 20. Sarah Ahmed got Demarest back even at 20 with a tip of her own, but from there it was all Kaiser and Brogan kept getting her the ball.
Kaiser slammed one off a back row dig to put her team in front for good and and, after a Demarest attack error, she took a short set in the middle of the floor and put it down to make 23-21. Kaiser gave her team the only set point in needed with another kill from the middle and then ended it with another well placed dink that landed untouched.
“We fought through it. You look at Demarest and how prepared they were and how well they executed, it was a hard game and late in that game either one of us was maybe one mistake away or one bad serve away from having it go against us,” said Old Tappan head coach Melissa Landeck, whose team improved to 6-0 on the season. “It helped that we got that confidence at the end in taking the first set and it just carried us through in the second.”
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Kelly Brogan had 19 assists for Old Tappan, which improved to 6-0 on the season. |
Natalie Alechko's kill from the outside on the third point of Set 2 gave Old Tappan a 2-1 lead and the Knights never looked back. Hayley Miller and Brittany Barry combined for a block to make it 10-6, Maya Illovsky served an ace to make it 13-7 and Alechko hit the line with a hit from the outside to make it 17-8.
After falling behind by a 20-10 score, Demarest finally found the rhythm that it last late in the first set by running off four straight points, two scored by Riede from the outside and another on a service winner by Faith Hoagland. But a serve into the net and an ace by Brogan stabilized things for Old Tappan, which turned a close match early into a late statement.
“It's always a big deal to play Demarest because we bring out the best in each other and no matter what else is happening, it's always our rivalry game and we always want to win,” said Brogan, the junior setter who finished with 19 assists. “The momentum that we got at the end of the first game really carried over to the second game. It was back-and-forth for a long time, but we have a drive in us to never give up and we keep on fighting through no matter what the score it. That is what [Coach] Landeck tells us to do and we listen.”
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