The 2017 spring season was a season of progress as well as change for the Malden High’s boys volleyball team. The third year of the program’s inception also marked the volleyball team’s along with the rest of Malden High’s sports team’s first season in the Northeastern Conference. The conference change as well as other challenges made for an increasingly testing season, and one in which the boys had to overcome tremendous adversity.
This year’s team was captained by seniors Germano Fidelis and Anthony Woo, both of whom were founding members of the team their sophomore year. Also returning for his second year as head coach, was Dan Jurkowski who looked to continue growing the team. Before the season began, the team had hoped to make the postseason for the first time in its short history. However, despite falling short of their playoff aspirations, the team showed enormous progress from last season as well as throughout this one.
With only six returning members on the team, newcomers had to contribute right away in order for the team to be successful. Despite this season being the first time most of them ever played organized volleyball, the newcomers were able to quickly adapt and flourish on the team. In fact, two newcomers, freshmen Tenzin Shakya and Zenhong Deng both were able to work their way into the starting lineup by the end of the year.
One of the many new faces on the team was sophomore Ryoma Yonetani, who was also able to provide some important production in just his first year playing volleyball. Yonetani praised the seniors and other returning members on the team for “being great leaders and helping out [him] and the other newcomers.” He continued by saying that he “is a much better player now than [he] was at the start,” pointing to his serve as the most improved aspect of his personal play.
When asked about his takeaway from the season, one of the returning players, junior Brandon Nguyen described the season as “exhilarating,” stating that the team “improved a lot quicker” compared to last season and that “[he] could notice the difference between the way [they] played at the start of the season to the way [they] played at the end.” Nguyen credited this improvement to the team’s commitment in practice where “everyone showed up and worked on improving their game.”
Nguyen continued to say that an example of their improvement throughout the season came in an away match against Pope John XXIII on May 8th. Although MHS was not able to come out victorious, they “were able to put up the best fight [they] have ever put up” as they took a great playoff team to five sets, nearly pulling off the upset.
Although the team only managed four victories in the year, along with the away match against Pope John XXIII, there were numerous other matches in which the team lost in five sets. Along with these five set losses, there were also multiple occasions in which the team got out to an early comfortable lead but allowed their opponents to come back and force five sets. An example of such came on May 2nd, when the team comfortably won the first two sets at home against Randolph High, but then proceeded to lose the next two sets forcing a tiebreaker fifth set which MHS won but was entirely avoidable.
When asked about this, both Yonetani and Nguyen described it as mental lapses that they need “to continue working on next season.” Nguyen explained that he thinks “when [they] lose a set, [they] lose some confidence and not play to [their] full potential.” Yonetani mentioned that the team needs to “keep their composure” in order to “win close games and not allow opponents to get back into matches.”
Next season the team hopes to translate their ever growing chemistry into results and continue to learn and improve with experience. Their ambition next year remains to make the state tournament for the first time in team history.
