Isla Reyes-Castelloe (10) set the ball up high, as Reese Monk (10) called out her set, before jumping off the sand and swinging her arm forward, earning a kill against Mt. Carmel to start off the second set, April 1. The pair went on to win their individual matches 2-0, contributing to the team’s overall 4-1 win. Reyes-Castelloe said the first set had a slow start since they were still determining MC’s strategies.
“The first set was kind of rough,” Reyes-Castelloe said. “We were warming up and still trying to figure out how to read the team and what spots on the court they were going for.”
Reyes-Castelloe said she noticed that their opponents often hit deep balls when she and Monk were at the net and would make unpredictable plays like sending a free ball over on one. To adjust, Reyes-Castelloe and Monk pulled off the net as much as they could to cover more ground.
“They were really good at sending it deep when we were pulled up,” she said. “If we were scrambling to get a ball, they definitely knew and were ready to send it over our heads, which got us a lot more in the first set because we weren’t ready and pulled back for that. I was trying to make sure that if one of us got stuck up, the other one would run further back to try to keep control of that because they were just ready to send it over on one.”
To counter these attacks, Reyes-Castelloe said that she and Monk also tried to send deep balls, using MC’s defensive strategies against them.
“When they were on defense, they were backpedaling, so we started going deep to try to get them off their balance,” she said.
While they could counter MC’s playing style, there was a force beyond Monk and Reyes-Castelloe’s control: strong winds. However, this was something the duo had prepared for, knowing how to use the weather to their advantage when serving.
“It was really windy, so I feel like we had some good rundowns when the wind carried a ball where we weren’t expecting it to,” Reyes-Castelloe said. “When you’re serving, if you serve against the wind blowing sideways, for example, it’ll make the ball look like it’s going to the person on the left, but it’ll carry it over to the right.”
Even though the pair got a lot of good serves with help from the wind, Monk said that it made passing and setting a lot harder.
“It’s really hard when you’re setting with the wind because if you think you’re setting straight up, then it’ll go further away from your partner than you think it will,” Monk said. “So, you have to be cautious.”
To combat this, Reyes-Castelloe said she kept passes lower during serve receive so that Monk could give her a more controlled set.
“The lower you keep your passes and the less you try to push them up, the easier it is for your partner to get to the ball and keep control and set you up,” she said. “It sounds slightly counterintuitive because you want to give your partner time to get to the ball, but the higher you pass it, the less control your partner has when they’re going to set it, especially if they’re using their hands because the ball can get carried more.”
Monk and Reyes-Castelloe won the first set 21-17. Despite the close score, Monk said she learned a lot from the first set and felt certain they would dominate the second.
“I was a little scared because it was really close, but I knew that all the mistakes that we made, we knew how to fix them, so I was pretty confident that we would win the [second] set,” she said.
With the previous set in mind, Reyes-Castelloe said they began to play more offensively and strategically.
“Offensively, we were going more for deep spots or the lines because we noticed they were pulling up and more forward,” she said. “I think our offense was a lot more organized, and then we were able to practice the other things, like hitting our spots, once we got the service receive under control.”
This tactic worked, and the pair won their second set 21-11. Reyes-Castelloe said she’s proud of how they improved from the first set and played well in the wind.
“I was glad that we were able to fix our mistakes in the second set, and it was definitely one of the windiest games we played in,” she said. “I was glad that we were able to adapt to that and that we got a win for our team.”
Reyes-Castelloe said that she and Monk have grown significantly over the past two seasons they’ve been partners, and she looks forward to keeping up the team’s undefeated 2-0 league record.
“I think we have a lot more of our technical skills under control this season and our communication has gotten a lot stronger over the year,” Reyes-Castelloe said. “Putting them together now, like telling each other where to go and being able to execute it, is something that we’ve been working on this season and I’m excited to see how it continues to play out.”
