The Berkshire Badgers competed in the Shaker Heights Raiders Volleyball Tournament at Shaker Heights High School on May 2.
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The Berkshire Badgers competed in the Shaker Heights Raiders Volleyball Tournament at Shaker Heights High School on May 2.
Taking on the Bard Raptors, the Garfield Heights Bulldogs and the Brecksville Bees, the Badgers had a strong tournament winning their first five games, and two matches over the Raptors and the Bulldogs.
In the final match of the day, the Badgers fell 2-1 to the Bees to finish as runners-up.
Overall, Berkshire Badgers Head Coach Tim Percic was happy with how the Badgers played throughout the tournament.
Coach Percic said that the tournament was a good opportunity to play teams the Badgers normally do not face during the regular season, but might, however, play during the OHSAA Playoffs.
“(The tournament) was a great challenge, lots of competition, and lots of fun,” Coach Percic said.
On the way to a runners-up finish, the Badgers were led by senior captain Roman Percic and junior captain Danny Starr.
In particular, in the first match against the Raptors, Starr (5 kills) and Percic (3 kills) led the Badgers at the net. In addition, the Badgers had 5 aces (Carson Jones – 3 aces; Starr – 2 aces).
In defeating the Raptors 2-0, the Badgers won set one 25-18 and set two 25-12.
Roman Percic said that the Badgers played well against the Raptors.
“We came together as a team,” Percic said. “We had a couple of mistakes. This (match) we seemed to put it together a little bit better. Our serves were more accurate, in more than not. Our hitting was pretty decent. We had a little trouble passing but we made it work.”
As Percic mentioned, the Badgers serve game was very good against the Raptors.
In fact, serving well for the Badgers was Danny Starr.
After trailing early in game two, Starr gave the Badgers momentum with excellent serving.
In producing great serves with velocity, movement and accuracy against the Raptors, Starr said that he made an important change a few weeks ago after reflecting on his performance against the Chardon Hilltoppers on April 14.
“I was top spin jump serving against Chardon and it was like 50 percent were landing in and 50 percent weren’t,” Starr said. “So, I was like, ‘I’m just going to start standing float’, and for some reason my brain just wouldn’t let me stand there. I was still just jumping with it and it just slowly started to get better.”
Since making this technical change, Starr said that his serves have become more consistent and accurate.
“I’m starting to be able to put it where I want it to (go) as well,” Starr said. “And it’s kind of just developing, especially over the past couple weeks when I started working with it. It started to develop a lot to the point where I could get a ton of float on it. It’s just starting to get consistent.”
Coach Percic said that the floater that Starr is serving is a difficult to return.
“In college everything is about power, how hard you can hit the ball,” Coach Percic said. “In high school, if you get a good floater that moves around left to right unexpectedly, that’s as good as a 70 mile per hour top spin serve.”
The coach continued: “It’s awesome that he has that in his bag of tricks. Everytime (Starr) goes back to serve, we’re happy about that.”
In addition to Starr (5 kills, 2 aces), also leading the Badgers offensively in their victory over the Raptors were Roman Percic (3 kills), Carson Jones (3 aces) and Ethan Miller (8 assists).
Defensively, the Badgers were led by Jones (13 digs), Percic (5 digs), Starr (4 digs), Miller (4 digs), Ben Pleva (2 Blocks) and Scott Wendl (2 digs).
After defeating the Raptors, the Badgers faced the Garfield Bulldogs in the semifinals.
In two sets, the Badgers defeated the Bulldogs, 25-12 and 25-15 to advance to the finals against the Brecksville Bees.
Roman Percic said that the match against the Bulldogs presented the Badgers with the challenge of keeping their minds focused on the task at hand. Throughout the match he said there were many timeouts and additional breaks in action due to the court needing to be dried.
“We pulled it together, (and) we played hard enough to win the match,” Roman Percic said. “Overall, I think we did pretty good.”
Added Starr, “It was just like the last (match). We started clicking and coach even got some of our players who don’t get a ton of time, in (to the match), which was great. It all worked out and we’re all just working together really good.”
Leading the Badgers offensively in their victory over the Bulldogs were Starr (5 kills, 1 ace), Maddox Fuentes (3 kills), Percic (2 kills, 2 aces), and Wendl (3 aces, 1 kill).
Defensively, the Badgers were led by Jones (8 digs), Percic (2 digs) and Starr (2 digs).
The Badgers return to the court on May 5 when they travel to Independence to take on the Blue Devils.
