By Frank Rizzo
MONTICELLO — October 27, 2006 — Either Monticello put on a matchless volleyball exhibition on Tuesday night – or it faced a dispirited opponent at the nadir of its season’s fortunes.
Either way, it was hard to gauge the team’s readiness for the upcoming Section IX Tournament, where the Lady Panthers are expected to draw either the second or third seed in the A bracket.
Monticello coach Karen Atack refused to speculate on who her team’s first-round opponent might be as she perused an official Section IX volleyball document.
“We’re not allowed to be at the seeding meeting this Thursday night,” she said of coaches. “We’ll find out about the brackets Friday morning [October 27] on the [OCIAA] Web site.”
There was little doubt of the outcome of Tuesday’s OCIAA Division II match as Monticello never fell behind in sweeping the Tuxedo Tornadoes by the totally dominating scores of 25-2, 25-9 and 25-8.
In the first game, Emily Drobysh served for the last 10 points, garnering three aces and two of them were “pure” – that is, dropped in untouched.
“Tuxedo gave us a much better game [in Tuxedo on September 25],” said Atack. “I don’t know what happened tonight. They collapsed.
“This was night and day,” she added.
Though disappointed that the Monties could not catch Cornwall for the league title, Atack noted there were years “when we won the league and lost in sectionals and other years when we lost the league but won the sectionals. [The tournament] should be interesting.”
Monticello shared the league title with Cornwall last year, as both squads compiled 15-1 records. This season the Lady Green Dragons, who return all the starters from the defending Class A championship team, held a 15–0 record with one match to play while Monticello finished 13–3.
“We still have some things to work on,” said Atack, who hopes her team is peaking at the right time. “[But] you can never count us out.”
On Tuesday, Drobysh led Monticello with 12 service points while Pollyanna Palhano had 10 and Eryn Robinson added nine.