Millionaires wrap up another winning season under Paquette

LENOX – Lenox’s volleyball team is wrapping up another winning season under coach Ed Paquette, despite dropping an uncharacteristic game against Taconic on Monday.

The Millionaires are 12-4 overall and only trail the undefeated Lee Wildcats in the county’s league standings.

“The name of the game is bump, set, spike,” said Paquette, who hopes to improve on last year’s 12-8 record.

The one doing a majority of the “bumping” and “setting” this year for the Millionaires is senior Rachel Cogswell. She recently garnered her 1,000th assist from the center setter position and consistently leads the team in digs as well.

Against Taconic on Monday, the Millionaires dropped a three-set match to the Braves, who brought a lot more energy, emotion and fan support to Lenox in the loss.

“Taconic needed the win tonight and one over [Pittsfield] in order to qualify for the tournament,” Paquette said after the game. “This was a must-win for them – they came ready to play and their fans came to support them – their fan support was a lot louder than ours and this is our home court.”

The difference for Lenox was the absence of their star frontline player Emma Jackson, who left school on Monday with an undisclosed illness.

Without Jackson, Paquette was forced to rearrange his lineup, causing players to play out of position. The result: the Millionaires made quite a few unforced errors and bad decisions that led to the straight three-set loss.

“They wanted it a lot more than we did,” the coach said. “Due to the lineup change, they weren’t used to where they were playing.”

Lenox’s success, for the most part, has been due to the strong frontline of Jackson and Liz Mitts, being set up by Cogswell. The fearsome threesome has led the Millionaires to become one of the county’s best hitting (spikes) team.

Against Taconic, Cogswell led the Lenox squad with five kills, 30 assists, three aces and 10 digs, while Mitts had 13 kills and eight digs. Suzanne Woller also chipped in with seven kills and seven digs.

“Taconic played well,” Paquette said. “Our best hits, they dug them up, that’s what we’ve been doing well this year, was our hits, but not tonight; we weren’t passing well enough to our setter so she could give good placement to hit.”

Heading into the tournament the Millionaires hope to advance past last year’s team (second round) and make it into the quarterfinals where they may face the state’s top volleyball team, Frontier.

However, getting a healthy Jackson back will be paramount for Lenox’s success from here on out.

“Emma’s our big middle player,” Paquette said. “Any time there is change it doesn’t go over well; sometimes it takes a little getting used to, or to overcome it, and other times – not so well.”

Other notable Lenox players for Paquette this season have been Kristin Read, Raiche Wright, Christine Sample, Lizzy Barry and Sophie Silverstein.

Posted by Tim Davis on October 24, 2012. Filed under High School Sports,Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry