Nashua South girls volleyball keeps Salem in check, remains unbeaten

NASHUA - The Nashua South and Salem high school girls volleyball teams went into Wednesday night's matchup wanting to do the same things.

Limit the other team's runs and put together a couple of streaks in each game to take control of the set.

The Panthers were able to do both, and the final results was a 3-0 win over the Blue Devils. South won by scores of 25-15, 25-22 and 25-16.

"They were right there, point for point," South coach Wayne Siejkowski said. "Our goal is, you can’t give up runs. If you serve aggressive and get one or two runs a game, your changes are pretty good. Put together a run and not let any up."

South's biggest run of the night came in the second set, and turned the match around for the Panthers. After South pulled away late to win the first game, Salem went up 18-14 in the second, but behind the serving of Paige Garland, the Panthers won seven straight points to go up 21-18 and eventually closed out the game to take a 2-0 lead.

"Paige took care of all the opportunities she was given," Siejkowski said. "With them focusing on our outsides, she had a lot of good looks and she had more kills. She was putting the ball in play and you could see her confidence is much better this week than it’s been. She’s probably one of our most consistent servers on the team."

Kara Kelliher also had a big night for South (14-0), recording 16 kills, while Brianna Henderson added six kills.

"Brianna played pretty good defense, but her serve set the tone," Siejkowski said. "I think her aggressive serving helped them out of the offensive system they wanted to run. It contained them a little bit more."

Salem (11-4) got six kills from Kristen Carney and five kills from Lauren McCloskey while Alyssa Collette had 14 digs and Taylor Vartanian had four blocks. Kacie Blanchet added 13 assists and six service points.

"We came out a little flat and struggled on the serve receive," Salem coach John Roemer said. "We played with them through the first game, for halfway through, then we didn’t play with all the momentum that we should. They’re a good team. We didn’t play up to what we should play."

Despite dropping the first game, the Blue Devils picked up momentum to start the second, taking the early lead and holding on to it. Salem went up by as many as five points, including 16-11, when South started to chip away.

The Panthers eventually won 11 of the final 15 points in the second set to go up 2-0.

"I feel like we can play with all the best teams in the state, but we have our lulls," Roemer said. "When we were playing point-to-point, when we service-receive well, we’re siding out. When we struggled on service-receive, everything falls apart. They’ve got aggressive servers."

South led the third game from start to finish, going up by as many as nine points before Salem was able to come back. The Blue Devils got the lead down to five, 20-15, forcing South to take a timeout, but the Panthers won five of the final six points to wrap up the win.