Team Happy (Karen Nolan,Ryan Leff, Bryan Schaefer and Stephanie Traviola), one of the completely new teams in the Coed Fours League, got off to a great start on Sept. 26.
Team Happy went 6-0 in its debut, beating perennial Gold Division contenders Ultra and the Intellivision All-Stars.
Team Happy beat Ultra (Edna Cetina, Jeff Shirtz, Alex Dessau and sub "Super'' Dave Schulte, who arrived late as a fill-in for Glen Soria), 25-16, 25-20, 15-9 in their opening match, then beat the All-Stars (Jenifer Hollis, Chris Weber, and Jason Baum - Jonathon Brooks wasn't able to play on opening night) 25-18, 25-11, 25-18.
In the victory over Ultra, Stephanie had 9 kills and 3 aces, Bryan had 10 kills, a block and 2 aces, Karen had 8 kills, and Ryan contributed 5 kills, 3 blocks and 3 aces while sharing the setting duties with Bryan.
Ultra was led by Alex with 14 kills, a block and an ace, while Jeff had 5 kills and an ace. Edna did the setting.
The fourth Gold Division team, Touch It (Lynnette Chen, Sean Mackey, Anthony Calabria, and Dan Botzan, subbing for Carrine Mackey) also went 6-0, beating the All-Stars 25-13, 25-15, 15-13, and Ultra 25-19, 25-18, 25-10.
That sets up a first-place showdown between Touch It and Team Happy this Wednesday at 8:45.
In Touch It's victory over Ultra, Anthony and Dan each had 15 kills, while Sean had 7 kills, 3 blocks and 2 aces. Lynnette did the setting from back row and had 3 aces. She had two of the aces in the third game during the longest scoring stretch of the night, as she served points 8 through 15 in the third game for Touch It.
The match also exhibited the camaraderie involved in the league. On one point, Dan had a hit close to the line that the ref called in, but Dan said it was out. But that turned out not to have mattered, because Dave admitted he had touched the net on the play (not sure what the ref - Fred - was watching on that play.).
The second completely new team, Resistencia (Carla Barbatu, Junior Martins, and Vinicius Costa), arrived late and had to forfeit its first two games against What Hurts (Angela and Roman Bulawski, Jennifer Duff, and Rich and Paul Mehlin), then lost the third game, 25-23. In the second round, Resistencia beat Jumbled Up (Samantha Deckert, Bria Lovelace, Joe Cristofaro, Pat Coleman and Tory Thompson) 2 out of 3 (25-16, 30-28, 19-25) to start with a 2-4 record in the Silver Division.
In the other Silver matches, Jumbled Up won 2 of 3 from Team 5 (Laura Stoll, Deneen Murawinski, Chris Petitto, Alex Milov and Mike Brookes) and Team 5 beat What Hurts 2 of 3.
In the Bronze Division matches, BUCA (Jennifer Peach, Phil Oney, Tony Weshefsky, Jon Raser, and Mark Skeels) beat the Flying Squirrels (Melissa Eckoff, Kat McPhail, Mark Menadier, Scott Shaw and A.J. Prentice) 3-0; The Squirrels came back and took 2 of 3 from Stu's Crew (Stu Nemiroff, Juldy Larick, Anthony Makoujy, Kellye Pierre, and Bill Condon); AARP (Terry Standfast, Tina Toribio, Mike Cohen and Sarah Chisholm) went 5-1, winning all three against Stu's Crew and taking 2 of 3 from BUCA.
