Following their tough county finals loss to SPF, the Blue Devils took the court against the North Brunswick Raiders. Despite the previous loss, head coach William Leonard said, “If we’re losing that close of a game to the best team in the state, then we’re knocking on the door to win a championship here,” Leonard said.
The Blue Devils emulated this confidence throughout their match, resulting in a 2-0 win over the Raiders.
Right out of the gates the Blue Devils found themselves in a 3-0 deficit and despite their best effort. Following a timeout, Westfield started to build some momentum of their own. “We locked in,” said senior co-captain Daniel Flores.
Leonard reflected similar ideas, saying, “We just got off a little bit of a slow start. Sometimes you just need to kind of hit the reset button.” Leonard said, “We knew we weren’t playing up to our potential there. We kind of came out a little flat. But we made some corrections. We knew what we needed to do, and we went and got the job done.
The set became closer and closer as a result of a series of kills by juniors Brock Borlenghi and Ben Bukiet-Beker.
After a few back and forth points, Westfield was able to move in front behind the serving of NYU commit senior Veer Agarwal, and Borlenghi who served 3 straight aces to finish off the first set.
The second set started off similarly, with both teams clashing head-to-head with no clear leader. Then Borlenghi got four blocks in a row, forcing a Raider timeout. “This game kind of came out of nowhere.” Borlenghi said, “Being able to do something like that, it really boosted my own spirits, and I think helped me to play better in the long run.”
Following the timeout, the momentum of the first set sparked back up, and nothing was throwing Westfield off their rhythm. “They started to find it and once they did, they just didn’t let up off the gas,” Leonard said, “We started swinging a bit harder. Our passes got a little cleaner. I think our serves really got a lot tougher as well, which put them out of system and made life a lot easier for us on our side of the net.”
The team will take the court again on Tuesday, May 20, at 4:30 vs Woodbridge as they continue to prepare for a deep state tournament run. “We had a really good day today. We want to make sure we replicate that,” Leonard said, “We’ve got to work a lot on making ourselves stronger defensively and making sure we’re getting a really strong attack going and we’re going to continue to do that.”
