Girl’s Volleyball Falls 2-0 to Moorestown Thursday

It has been a tough two weeks for the Pirates girl’s volleyball team, playing four out of five weekdays last week and all five weekdays this week. The constant play can be a good thing, and it can be a bad thing, depending on how you look at it.

“We played every day this week,” head coach Sara Skvir said. “We played the last three days of last week. We haven’t had a practice. Girls are getting sick. There are some injuries here and there. The tough schedule, it’s nice to have, we like playing tough teams, but it’s taking a toll on our bodies.”

The fourth of five games in a row this week saw the Pirates host Moorestown on Thursday afternoon. Despite a valiant effort in the first set, and inspired play in the second set, the Pirates dropped the match to Moorestown 2-0.

“Recently, we’ve been dealing with injuries and girls out of position,” Pirates libero Andrea Benites said. “If we can get through this and dominate games that are once or twice a week, then we will be good. Today was a good competition. I thought we would win.”

The Pirates build leads of 6-1 and 11-3 in the first set before Moorestown fought back to tie at 13 apiece. Cinnaminson then built a 23-19 lead late in the set, but could not stave off the Quakers, who scored six consecutive points to win 25-23.

“The first set, we had them and then their one server came out and kind of took the lead,” Skvir said. “They started picking up on our hits and they stole it from us.”

The second set was not as hotly contested by the Pirates, but still very well played. The second set saw ties of 1-1, 3-3, 4-4, 9-9 and 10-10. The tie at 10 was the final tie of the game. The final time the Pirates led the second set was at 10-9.

Moorestown used a seven point run to win the second set, 25-15, after the Pirates got the set to 18-15.

“They played really well all around,” Skvir said. “The last couple of games we struggled with our serves. I think we had 12 service errors the past few games. Today, I think we had a total of four or five in both sets.”

This was the second time this year that Cinnaminson played Moorestown, and despite the loss, this match was much more competitive than the first match.

“When we went there early in the season, they dominated the game,” Skvir said. “The score shows it. Coming out today, let’s take advantage. We can compete with them. We’ve been playing really, really well together. It was a winnable game.”

The Pirates hit the court again on Friday, their fifth straight match this week, when they visit Pennsauken Tech at 3:45pm. The squad will finally get a chance to practice on Saturday for the first time in quite a while.

“We get a break this coming Saturday and we get to have a practice,” Skvir said. “We need to get our serves in on game point. We will work on cleaning up some of our defense and offense.”