On Monday, April 20^th, the Paint Branch Panthers squared off against the JFK Cavaliers at JFK High School in the regular season matchup, 20-25, 25-19, 25-12 and 25-23.  This victory boosted the Panthers’ overall record to 3-6.

At the start of the match, Coach Hardy enthusiastically stated, “We’re amped up! We’re gonna win! We’re ready for playoffs!”  However, in the first set, the Panthers got off to slow start and made several basic defensive and offensive errors, such as missing 4 serves and standing out of rotation twice, which cost them the first set, 20-25.

In the next set, the Panthers came out with more enthusiasm than the previous set, with junior Brandon McMullen boosting the Panther moral.  While the Panthers were still getting into the groove of things, the Cavaliers went into a steady decline, allowing the Panthers to steal the set 25-19.

In set three, the Panthers made drastic improvement over the previous two sets with no service errors and a solid offense provided by middle blockers Noah Taye and Wajih Rehman, as well as outside hitter Danial Syed.  The three also contributed to a strong defense with several blocks, and combined with the outstanding passing of junior libero, Aaron Kyei-Asare, allowed the Panthers to dominate the Cavaliers 25-12.

In the final set, the Cavaliers came back to put up more of a fight against the Panthers and were ahead for a decent portion of the set.  Coach Hardy called a strategic time-out at 21-22, allowing the Panthers to get back into motion.  The time-out paid off as the Panthers won the set- and game- 25-23.

Overall both Panther coaches were pleased with how the boys played.  Assistant Coach Dan Maszkiewicz stated, “This is the first time in recent memory that we’ve gone from dropping the first set to sweeping the other three.”

Coach Hardy was ecstatic at the new opportunity for the boys’ team to make it into the play-offs for the first time in 5 years.  They’re pumped up and ready to take Einstein in their next game on Wednesday.