By Christine Sampson
“We're breaking down with the basics,” the Terriers' senior setter said. “We really need to pick it up. Maybe we need a bit of punishment to get back into it.”In Monday's regular-season rematch of last year's CHSAA championship, league rival Chaminade found every hole in SFP's defense and kept the Terriers off-balance with aggressive serving. St. Francis Prep may have pushed the Flyers to five games last week, but this time lost in three, 20-25, 13-25, 15-25.”We're struggling,” Terriers coach Kevin Colucci said. “Not many things are going right for us right now.”St. Francis Prep (4-6 CHSAA) had its only significant lead of the match in the first set, when the Terriers took a 17-15 lead on a solo block by Brian Amorese, but some receiving errors, passing problems and a couple of blatant missed calls by the officials gave Chaminade (9-1) the win.”We had a couple of lulls,” Flyers coach Sal Trentacoste said, “But we settled down and covered well. We had to stay with (Prep).”But after that, it was more a game of catch-up than any other kind of game. Chaminade jumped out to a 7-2 lead in the second set on a pair of spikes by Andrew Forero (14 kills) and a run of menacing jump serves from Jimmy Zenker (9 kills, 5 aces).In the third set, Amorese landed two aces during a 5-point run that got SFP as close as 10-11, but Chaminade ran away again when the Terriers began making some front-row mistakes.”We're taking it really seriously,” said Richardson, who had 13 assists for the Terriers. “With all this losing, we need to just run our drills. We need a good game to get us to a good mind set.”That's not to say there are no saving graces to talk about. Matt McAleer, who led Prep with 5 kills, clearly has some power in his arm. Yoosup Shim's reflexes are quick at libero and Greg Siroky, who recently returned from an ankle injury, played a levelheaded game even when the Terriers were clearly in some kind of hole.The team is still missing the presence of the seven seniors who graduated last year. Amorese and McAleer are the only two returning starters on a team that is typically a contender for the league title. This year, though, especially with the emergence of a dominant Kellenberg (10-0) squad, everything is wide open.In any case, Colucci is confident his team will be prepared for the playoffs.”We definitely have some shining lights out there, even though the good things are kind of getting overshadowed,” he said. “They're beating themselves up. They have to believe in themselves.”Reach contributing writer Christine Sampson by e-mail at TimesLedger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 143.
