Piscataway NJ- Piscataway girls volleyball team beat J.P. Stevens (12-4) in 4 sets last Tuesday evening, 10/7. They posted 16-25, 25-18, 25-13, and 27-25 set scores in the Patton gym to snap an 8 year losing streak against J.P. Stevens. The last time they won against J.P Stevens was a 2-1 victory on September 27th, 2017.
Piscataway handed J.P. Stevens their 4th loss of the season with the help of a quick start in both
sets 2 and 3 creating a huge momentum swing for the team after set 1. They did this with big swings from Milani Washington and clutch service points from Olivia Dissaro and Brielle Miller.
Washington put up 21 kills with the help of 22 assists from Miller and 11 assists from Kayla Elamparo. Dissaro led the team in digs with 22 followed by Washington with 15 and Annabelle Lin with 10. Dissaro also led the team in service points with 10 followed by Miller with 9 and Lin with 8.
Piscataway was able to turn things around after the first set where they were playing sloppy and gave up many service points to Aimee Han who led J.P Stevens in service points with 14 on Tuesday. Brian Tuskan, Piscataway Head Coach, commented on his team’s performance in the first set.
“We came out a little bit flat in the first set,” Tuskan said. “It just looked like we weren’t really ready to play.”
Piscataway was able to turn it around in the second set after a discussion in the huddle in-between sets. Tuskan discussed key information that led to Piscataway’s victory.
“We decided that we want to play defense, not let the ball fall, and make the other team score the points instead of giving up points with errors and mistakes,” Tuskan said.
With Piscataway’s starting setter, Channen Doman, sitting out due to sickness, Piscataway had to run a different formation that needed other players on the team to step up. Coach Tuskan was very proud of the performance from his players.
“Our setter was out sick from school.” Tuskan said.” I also had Danisha come in as middle, having not played quite a bit for the last couple of weeks. [She] set some good blocks for us. Our setting, even though we don’t have our regular setter Channen, both setters, Brielle and Kayla, did phenomenal. Also again for both of our outsides, Juliana and Milani, they hit the balls they could hit. They placed the balls that they needed to place and made us really, really difficult to defeat and I was just super happy.”
Piscataway Senior Opposite Hitter, Brianna Genteel, who posted up 6 kills, 4 digs, and 1 clutch block, was very proud of Piscataway’s performance as well.
“Our performance was really good. Of course the game is full of highs and lows but we played to our full strengths and we did what we had to do.”
Piscataway improved to is now 8-9 and plays again at home tomorrow, Tuesday, October 14th, against East Brunswick (4-10) in the Patton Gym at 5:00 p.m.
