Newfield scores four-set win over Walt Whitman
By Bill Landon
The Newfield girls volleyball team came roaring back from a first-set loss to take the next three for a 3-1 nonleague win over visiting Walt Whitman Oct. 10, 19-25, 25-22, 25-23, 25-19.
Newfield took its first lead on a point that put the Wolverines ahead 7-6 in the second set. The team made several mental errors and was caught looking at two inbound balls as Walt Whitman bounced right back to tie the set 15-15. After a handful of long volleys, Newfield found its rhythm and rattled off three unanswered points, and after a brief hiccup scored two more to edge ahead 20-16.
Coming out of a Wildcats timeout, Newfield capitalized on Walt Whitman miscues, and senior outside hitter Olivia Bond smacked a break point kill shot over the net to propel the Wolverines to the win.
“At first our energy wasn’t up, and in the second set we knew we needed to win,” Bond said. “Walt Whitman was really good at scrambling, but we pulled it together. We pushed, and once we bring our energy up, we can do anything.”
Walt Whitman stretched in the third set to break out to an 18-12 advantage. Newfield came out of a timeout call refreshed, and chipped away at the deficit until the Wolverines tied the set 19-19. Both teams traded points, and again Walt Whitman was back on top, 22-21. That is, until Newfield senior Naomi Ruffalo-Roman had something to say about it. She sent a kill shot over the net to tie the set 22-22, and scored twice more from the service line to bring her team to the finish line.
“We made more mistakes than we would like,” Ruffalo-Roman said. “But we worked really hard towards the end and our hitting was much better.”
The Wolverines knew they had to come out strong in the fourth set to avoid a fifth, and took charge from behind the line as senior libero Jessica Clark went on a service scoring streak that put Newfield ahead 18-10.
“Whitman is a really good team — they were scrambling, so we had to gather it up,” Clark said. “Our team played better from [the second set], but we need to focus on our serving — we hit a lot into the net.”
Newfield junior Jeanette Bruni got busy from behind the line as the left-handed hitter found holes on the other side of the net to put her team out front 22-15. The team ran away with the game from there.
Ruffalo-Roman had 18 kills and 10 digs to lead Newfield, now at 5-5 overall, and junior setter Madison Wenzel added 36 assists and three aces.
“They got to a lot of balls and they kept the ball in play,” Newfield head coach Christy Innes said of Walt Whitman. “They are very young and we knew we had to out-hustle them because that team can get their hands on a lot of balls that other teams can’t.”
Newfield is back in action hosting Smithtown East Oct. 13 in a League III matchup at 5:45 p.m.