Mike Schober was hardly upset. There were a few things nagging at him – his team’s passing, especially – but the Mary Louis girls volleyball coach was taking a positive outlook after a 25-14, 25-23, 20-25, 25-17 loss to two-time defending CHSAA Brooklyn/Queens champion St. Francis Prep on Friday in Jamaica Estates.
“We’re happy that we competed a little bit,” Schober said. “We didn’t shut down.”
St. Francis (4-0) won the first two sets and Mary Louis (2-1) managed to put together a solid third set, capitalizing on Terriers errors, to mount a comeback. For a group of players who have almost no varsity experience, Schober will take that this early in the season. It was the first time Prep had lost a set since 2007 against TMLA, which fell to SFP in last year’s diocesan title match.
“It means something, because we were still in the game,” Mary Louis sophomore libero Anna Carbone said.
Stephanie Taibe, who showed a strong swing and a good block, had 10 kills and Cristina Fristachi had 20 assists for the Hilltoppers. It’s Carbone, Schober said, who is the key to his team’s attack. Mary Louis has size and packs some punch. It just needs to make sure it gets the ball to those big girls.
“You can’t use your hitters if you can’t pass,” Schober said.
Those woes really started in the first set and got better as the match went on. Mary Louis was neck and neck with Prep early in the first and then the Terriers went on a run and finished them off. In the third set, Mary Louis weathered a 7-0 run and hung on to the victory.
“If we would have played better in the first set, it would have helped out,” Schober said.
But a competitive match against a team that’s right up there with the best in the city? At this point in the season, he’ll take it.