SAUGUS — Monday evening, the Marblehead (8-4) volleyball team made its way to Saugus. Better yet, the Magicians made their presence felt with a dominant 3-0 sweep of the Sachems (6-8).
Marblehead came out hot in the first set, going up 14-5, midway through it. Then, Saugus began to fight back with help from Mara Faiella and Olivia Chaisson.
Saugus had its moments early, but it wasn’t enough to stop the Magicians, who won the opening set, 25-21.
“Our kids started off slow today,” said Marblehead coach Killeen Miller. We struggled to play as a team and we had a conversation after. We were able to pull out that second set and say, ‘Where do we want to be right now? What do we want to do?’ I think the girls turned it around today and finished off really strong.”
In set No. 2, it came down the wire, but Marblehead’s Greta Sachs (13 kills, 5 aces) and Megan Parkman came up clutch in a 29-27 nail-biter.
In the final set, Marblehead put an end to the match with a commanding 25-15 win.
“Marblehead has always been a tough, well-put-together team. Their coach does a lot of offseason coaching and she’s a phenomenal coach. [The] first set, we were right there in it with them. The second set, we kind of just threw it. We were up by 11 or 12 points on them and we ended up bringing it into overtime and losing by two,” said Saugus coach MiKayla Niles. “The third set, to go down and lose by 10, and losing like that after the first two sets is obviously not what we wanted. It’s a rebuilding year like I’ve said. We have three returners, we have had some ups and downs, we are 6-8 now, and we have to put it together.”
After a tough loss, Niles had a simple message for her team.
“Keep your heads up and don’t be upset about the outcome. You worked your tails off and obviously it’s not the outcome that we wanted,” she said. “We get back in the gym tomorrow, we will critique a couple of things, and we will continue to go from there.”
For Marblehead, there were a few players who stuck out to Miller.
“Our passers stood out to me. Our offense pulled it together. We were making a ton of errors, but Lila Moniz came out really strong for us and started taking care of the ball,” Miller said. “I think our defense started to communicate better. Megan Parkman stepped up in a really big way and calmed our passers down. Sidney Faris was able to do just the same and once those pieces fell into place, it worked a lot better.”