Brett Carroll
Staff Writer
Boys’ volleyball is a growing sport at Keyport High School.
The program, which will enter its fourth year of existence, is on the rise in the eyes of coach Steve Bawer.
The coach is optimistic about the direction of the young team’s potential.
“I expect to, hopefully, double our win total from last year,” said Bawer, whose club finished 3-13 last spring. “Hopefully, we can get another guy or two to make [the] all-division [team]. Just improve and continue to add to our win total as we move on.”
Bawer is confident with the talent level but he is eager to see his players work together on the floor.
“The biggest thing is communication, as well as our passing and our serve return,” Bawer said. “Most of our basic skills are pretty good. We just need to communicate better and return serves, so we can run our offense.”
Bawer’s will call on some skilled veterans.
Senior middle hitter Jacob Attia earned Shore Conference all-division honors in 2017 and he will be joined by seniors Matt Ayala, an outside hitter, and Adrian Perez, a setter.
“We’re going to rely on Attia a lot,” Bawer said. “We also return our setter in Perez. One of our outside hitter in Ayala has stepped up big time this year. He’s looking really good in the preseason. So all three of them will be starters as seniors so we’ll be relying on them a lot.”
Perez and Ayala believe that the team can continue to grow, which could result in more victories.
“I just want to improve and get some wins,” Perez said. “Just try to improve every game. Right now, we just have to get our team set up, so we can run some plays and make things happen.”
“Since last year, our only goal was to improve, hopefully this year, we can do that even more and get a lot more wins,” Ayala added. “We want to win. And I think with the team we have this year, we can. Especially considering the experience we got last year. I feel like we’re a lot stronger now, we just need some more work.”
The Raiders will begin their season on April 3 at 10 a.m. when they play as the host to Wall Township High School.