On Friday, September 13, Westford Academy varsity girls’ volleyball faced Acton-Boxborough in a highly anticipated match. With the energy blazing in the crowds, both teams were hyped, screaming chants and plays to their teammates. However, although WA was highly motivated throughout the game, the team ended up losing, with a score of 0-2.

WA started off the game with great intensity. All the players were putting power into every move they made on the court. AB scored the first two points of the first set. Junior Sarah Cannuscio, #24, scored the first point for WA by slamming the ball onto AB’s side. Notably, junior Megan Tierney, #11, played a strong defense, alongside Senior Alexa Wilson, #3.  Wilson also excelled with her ability to deliver tricky spikes to Acton-Boxborough. For serving, senior Anshu Punreddy, #8, performed powerful serves that had a target towards the opposing players’ feet.

Although WA played vigorously throughout the first set, Acton-Boxborough pulled through with their successful defensive and offensive strategies. AB ended up winning the first set, 22-25 after a rally ultimately ended with Westford Academy spiking the ball out. Punreddy felt that, despite the outcome of the first set, her team did an excellent job of keeping focus and a positive mentality.

“I think we did really good the first set. AB is a really hard team, so we went into the game thinking that we were going to lose. I think everyone was really nervous. We trusted each other a lot more during the first set, which is why we did a lot better during the first set than the second set,” Punreddy said.

After both teams took a few minutes to recuperate after the first set, the second set began with AB scoring the first two points by spiking the ball deep into the court. Westford Academy earned their first point of the set when AB spiked out. As the set continued, WA repeatedly received most of their points from mistakes on Acton-Boxboro’s part.

The second set was filled with errors from the WA girls. The team’s focus, teamwork, and energy declined after the score reached 9-16, with Acton-Boxborough in the lead. WA ended up making a few careless mistakes in which they started hitting the ball out, into the net, or downwards.

Ultimately, after a very stressful match, AB won the second set, 11-25, after a long rally between the two teams.

Although losing the game 0-2, Westford Academy showed strong attacks, approaches, and was able to hold quite a few rallies with AB.

For their next match, head coach Brandon Eang feels that the team must go back to the fundamentals and remember the basics in order to stay driven the entire match.

“I think communication is key. I think we need to trust our ability and our teammates’ ability. The bottom line is [Acton-Boxborough] has two really strong hitters and very good servers, which really threw us off. There was a lot of misreading of body language, so I think that is something we really need to work on in the future,” Eang said.