In the varsity volleyball game between Delone Catholic and Susquehannock High school, the players faced their biggest competition in their season so far.

The first game started with Susquehannock having the serve. As the game progressed, Delone slowly took the lead using their incredible defense and good ball placement. As Delone won this first game 25-17, Susquehannock was ready to step up in the second game where they were in serve receive.

However, one of Susquehannock’s starting seniors, Laura Savin, became sick and had to be removed from the game. Although Susquehannock played hard in this game without their starting outside hitter, Delone still managed to take the game 25-22.

In the third game, Susquehannock was serving but Savin was still on the bench. Susquehannock had the lead for most of this game, but Delone snuck up behind them and snatched the third game 25-23. Throughout the game, there were many players who stood out, including senior, Abigail Ferraro. Ferraro stepped up when Savin got sick and led Susquehannock with 9 kills, 4 digs, and 2 aces. Senior setter Kelly Franz also had a fantastic game with 6 aces and 3 digs. A particularly impressive play by sophomore Amber Bortner happened when a serve receive to Susquehannock was overpassed and Delone’s middle went up and hit it down, right into Amber Bortner’s arms. This again was an overpass that Delone’s middle went up again and hit it straight down to Bortner who passed this ball to target, who then set it outside to Ferraro, who then got the kill.

The fan section for Susquehannock for this game was fairly large seeing as the game was a red out. The crowd even got yelled at once by the referees for being too loud. After the game finished, Susquehannock’s coach Darla Pennewill was very proud of how her team played.

“The girls had a tough loss tonight, but they played their hardest…Delone is a tough team to beat,” said Pennewill the night of the game.

Delone Catholic’s coach Jason Leppo felt similarly about the game and is very excited to get to play Susquehannock again in districts when Savin is on the court.

“The biggest surprise was that Laura wasn’t able to play that much; I didn’t know until after the match that she was sick. From the night before when you played West York, we knew she had a heck of a match with 25 kills or something like that, so when she wasn’t out there in games 2 and 3, we were all caught a little off guard by that,” said Leppo.

Ferraro, however, did not exactly agree with the coach’s sentiment of a game well played.

“I think we definitely could have played better and that we could have beaten them if we had played our best and had all our players healthy,” said Ferraro.