Verdict not in Judges’ favor

It seems, at least recently, whenever Francis Lewis and Cardozo meet on the volleyball court, the Patriots finish on top.
Prior to last season, Francis Lewis had owned the rivalry in recent seasons. They knocked the Judges out of the playoffs in two years running. Then last year, the Judges seemed to have finally figured out their nemesis. They won two of three meetings, including the tiebreaker for the division crown.
The victory pushed Cardozo’s seeding up to No. 3. It dropped Francis Lewis to No. 5. Even then, it worked in the Patriots’ favor. They returned to their first final since 2004, while Cardozo disappointingly lost in the second round to No. 14 Newtown.
“They had a great season and we ended up playing a very good team that was under-seeded,” Cardozo Coach Danny Scarola said. “[Newtown] being seeded 14 was a big mistake.”
Fast forward to this fall and not much has changed regarding the two teams’ luck. The Patriots, buoyed by their record-setting senior setter Jen Dortch and sophomore hitters Alicia Pawelec, Euginia Anthony, and Cherees Sheen, are again ruling this rivalry.
Last Thursday, October 11, they completed a season sweep of Cardozo, rolling to a 25-13, 25-23 victory at the Oakland Gardens school, three weeks after a three-set victory at Queens High School of Teaching.
“I told the girls: You can go two ways with this,” Scarola said. “You can either take this game and be traumatized by it, and let it affect you the rest of the season. Or say I don’t want to feel like this again and put your heart into it, and say we’re going to work that much harder to get that much better.”
“They came back stronger this year,” said senior outside hitter Christine Luebcke, who led the Judges with 10 kills. “We’ll just learn from it.”
The Judges played a poor match. They returned serves directly to Dortch, enabling Francis Lewis to set up their attack. They passed poorly themselves and their twin setters, Luebcke and Mallory Grubler, each had rare off nights. The shoddy performance was particularly surprising since Cardozo won the highly regarded Tottenville tournament the previous weekend.
“We lost the momentum and we killed ourselves,” Grubler said. “Basically, we’re a totally different team when we don’t play them.
“They psyche us out,” she added. “We just really want to win and they made us nervous.”
Scarola did not buy the “mental edge” excuse. After all, Cardozo beat Francis Lewis twice last year. Maybe, it was a factor in the first match, but not in the second game of this meeting, when the Judges raced out to a 16-10 lead.
“It was just a case of players having a bad day,” he said. “They just picked the wrong day to do it.”
While they seem to have the Judges’ number so far this fall, the Patriots are not counting them out quite yet. Dortch said her club just played better, making sure to note that their adversaries were not too bad in their own right.
“I’m sure we’ll see them in the playoffs,” she said, “because Cardozo is great. I expect they’ll win the rest of their games and be seeded high, just like us, in the playoffs.”