Hamilton girls fail to get the championship title third time in a row
The Hamilton girls just fell short of getting the Class D championship trophy on Saturday. It was a sad turn of events for Hamilton as it was the third consecutive time that the team almost had its hands on the prestigious title. They had lost the championship final to Oppenheim-Ephratah in 2009 while in 2010, the blow to Hamilton was dealt by the Living Word Academy.
The Class D final went on till four sets at Jamesville-DeWitt High School. By the time the number three seeded New York Mills were through with Hamilton, the score board showed final set scores of 25-19, 25-21, 17-25, 27-25.
The number four seeded Emerald Knights have had fourteen wins so far this season at the expense of eight losses. In contrast to this, the total number of wins the New York Mills team have had amount to 15. They have been able to achieve this figure by suffering an impressively low number of four losses.
Hamilton let the starting two sets slip by without putting in the required amount of effort. The coach for the team, Dennis Roy, expressed Hamilton’s performance in the following words: “The first two games were very bad. Serving usually is not our weak point.”
NYM visibly outplayed the Knights in the first two sets. In the starting couple of rounds, NYM had made 11 more aces than the Knights. The aces of NYM totaled 12 while the Knights had registered only 1 ace. Not only that, the attack of NYM was also better than the Knights. The NYM players that stood out in this regard were Alyssa Nicotera, Sara Hamilton and Kaitlyn Robles. Nicotera contributed by posting a significant amount of kills while both Hamilton and Robles supported their team mate by adding kills of their own along with blocks.
It was not till the start of the third set that Hamilton was able to gather their wits about them. What proved to be the turning point for the Knights was a kill by Marissa Sitts. This was followed by an ace of fellow team mate Rachel Holcomb. Taking inspiration from their team members, the rest of the team also stepped up their and Hamilton found itself up by 9-3. Once they got started, the Knights did not stop at that and had the lead at 17-9 as well. NYM tried to pull up with their rivals but they could not manage to take control of the set considerably. Therefore, it ended with a much needed Hamilton win at 25-17.
Despite the fact that the Knights started the fourth set of the game well, the lost control in the middle. NYM took advantage of it and eventually defeated the Knights by 27-25.
Therefore, where NYM have a reason for jubilation, the Knights head home with a heavy heart after losing the championship title yet again.
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