Dialog reporter
MILLTOWN – After two entertaining but not exactly crisp sets of volleyball Monday evening, Padua led St. Mark’s, 2-0. Whatever was said after the second set must have sunk in because the Pandas, ranked third in the state and getting ready to defend their state title in the postseason, came out a different squad in game three. Padua overwhelmed the Spartans in the third set en route to a sweep in a Catholic Conference match.
The Pandas used a balanced attack, with Haley Baker and Megan Barnett contributing from the service line and Emily Jarome, Stephanie Annone and Vanessa Crumety from the front to overwhelm St. Mark’s in the third set, 25-12. The Pandas won the first two sets, 25-19 and 25-22.
The win lifted Padua to 11-3 on the season, with just one regular-season match remaining, this Friday at home vs. Ursuline at 7:30 p.m. on the Pandas’ Senior Night. St. Mark’s fell to 8-5; the Spartans have two matches left, the first of which is Thursday at No. 4 Archmere at 6:15 p.m.
Padua did enough to win the first two sets, but the team made too many unforced errors and its passing was not crisp. That all changed in the third set. The Pandas started the final game with Baker serving and quickly jumped to a 4-0 advantage, the last point of the run coming on a hardy kill by Jarome.
After the Spartans earned a point on a Padua error, the Pandas scored the next eight. Half of those points came on aces and service winners from Barnett. When they were not scoring off the serve, Padua was receiving quality front-line play from Jarome, Annone, Crumety and Lauren Mellor. St. Mark’s played Padua evenly from that point on, but the deficit was too large.
Mellor pushed the set to 24-12 with her sixth and final kill, followed by Crumety, who smashed match point off a Spartans defender and into the bleachers.
When the match started it looked like Padua would pull away early. They began with a 5-1 first-set advantage, but St. Mark’s got within 13-12 on an over-the-head volley from an improbable angle next to the scorer’s table. Padua slowly took control, and Jarome finished the set on a blast that hit a defender and sailed out of bounds.
St. Mark’s took advantage of several Padua mistakes to take a lead midway through the second set, leading to loud cheers from the Spartans’ cheerleaders and a sizeable number of students. St. Mark’s received stellar play from Addison Reich and Kennedy Staudt, twice taking a four-point lead. Down, 14-10, however, Padua charged back, changing the tenor of the set with a six-point run. The score was tied four times after that, the last time at 20, when Baker surprised St. Mark’s with a set over the front line to put the Pandas up for good. This set ended when Annone blew a shot off the fingers of a defender.
Jarome led the way with 13 kills for Padua. Crumety had eight, Annone seven and Mellor six. Barnett had six aces, while Baker had five blocks. Reich’s seven kills paced the Spartans, and Gillian Lytle had 13 digs.
Notes: On their Senior Night, St. Mark’s honored five players: Kennedy Staudt, Hannah Carney, Amanda Gerhart, Jenna Tomovich and Lauren Sorantino. Sorantino was injured and could not play, but she did deliver the honorary first serve. … Among the spectators were two recent Spartans, Abbie Mirabella and Claudia Seemans. Mirabella, last year’s player of the year in Delaware, now plays at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, while Seemans is a student at the University of Delaware.
