Preparation pays off for Lake Park

Lake Park volleyball coach Tim Murphy did everything to let his players know that Thursday’s showdown at Upstate Eight Conference Valley Division rival Neuqua Valley was the most important match of the year thus far.

The Lancers responded with a decisive 25-21, 25-16 victory over the Wildcats, who played tough in the first game but faded in Game 2.

“Our two biggest goals this year are to win conference and go to state,” said Murphy. “And the boys knew how much we needed this win to stay in the conference lead. The guys took the challenge under a pressure situation.”

“We were preparing for this match since the beginning of the week,” said Lake Park outside hitter Brian Fischer, who had 5 kills and 10 digs for the winners. “We passed well, we blocked well and we served well. We came up big for the big game.”

Game 1 was nip and tuck for the first 14 points featuring ten ties and five lead changes.

A scoring block by Devin Burke gave the Lancers (17-6, 3-0) the lead for good at 15-14 and three kills by Fischer extended the margin to 19-16.

Mike Dickerson’s ended the game in the Lancers’ favor.

“We’ve been focusing on defense a lot in practice,” Murphy said. “And our defense came up big tonight.”

The Lancers led from wire to wire in Game 2 and they got stronger as the game went on.

“Our serving and serve-receive were huge tonight,” Murphy said. “We won the serve-receive battle.”

Kevin Smith had 4 kills for the Lancers while Andrew Hochstadt added 4 blocks. Setter Dave Prentis dealt 23 assists.

Neuqua Valley (18-6, 2-1), which lost its second match in two nights, was led by Joe Michael, who had 6 kills and 6 blocks, and Trey Dimond with 4 kills and 6 digs. Ryan Cahill also came up with 6 digs.

“We were flat tonight. We had no energy,” said Neuqua Valley coach Erich Mendoza. “The first game we played well and until the end things could have gone either way. But when things started to go bad you could see it on our players’ faces that they were feeling sorry for themselves.”

What went wrong for the Wildcats in Game 2?

“We had no communication on offense or on defense,” Mendoza said. “When we needed a big kill we couldn’t get it. We didn’t get good swings on them. And we didn’t pass very well. Our strength is running our middles, and you can’t do that when our pass is at the 10-foot line. They took advantage of their mismatch on the outside.”