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BUIES CREEK, N.C. - The Camels hosted the Italian Junior National team Sunday, Sept. 6 in a exhibition match. The teams played all five sets of the match regardless of score.
The Italian Junior National team were in the states getting some practice in against collegiate teams. The Camels had the pleasure of being one of those teams to scrimmage the Italians before they head to Puerto Rico for the 2015 Women's Junior Volleyball World Championships. The world championships will be played Sept. 11-19.
"We played well," said head coach Greg Goral. "I think we played with a confidence and focus that we need to kind of improve on our program. I was happy to see that our young team with new attackers in a lot of different positions kind of stood up to the challenge of playing a great junior national team and we played well. There were times when we needed to execute better but overall I was very happy with how we performed."
Katelyn Layden led with eight kills while Rachel Harty and Madison Linxwiler contributed an addition seven a piece. Jenny Tait and Jessica Stocking each added six of their own for a team total of 44. Rebecca Ramirez and Summer Schuitema shared the serving duties and recorded 18 and 16 assists, respectively, for a team total of 38. On defense Mary Crema led the way with 15 digs and Schuitema added six for a team total 45.
"The whole weekend has been good," said Goral. "We relied on a lot of different people. I don't know that there was one person consistent enough throughout all four matches of the weekend, but Crema's defense was outstanding again and her ball control and serving kind of anchors our defense. Linxwiler did a great job in several matches attacking and she did a very good job today. Rachel Harty stepped up at times on the right side and attacked a lot of good balls. Stocking got in a few games today and scored with some really nice kills. All the way around I really enjoyed the ball control on defense. Both setters did a really good job distributing the ball and we were able to get a lot of quality swings. So it was really a number of people and as a unit I think we have really taken a step forward and I am looking forward to this next weekend."
Exiting the weekend the Camels are 3-4 on the season heading into a tournament at North Florida next weekend, Sept. 11-12. The Orange and Black will face the host school Friday night at 7 p.m. They play again on Saturday in a double header with their first game set for 9 a.m. against Florida Atlantic and then Bethune-Cookman at 1 p.m.
