Saturday, August 2, 2008

Will Nic Be Celebrating on a November Night: A Preview of Boys Sectional Two

This is the second stop on our 28-day journey through every boys and girls WIAA volleyball sectional. We're trying our level best to provide coverage that's fair and comprehensive, but oversights and errors will occur. The good news is we can make corrections relatively quickly (unless we're out of town, which we are right now). In any event, let us know what we're missing, and we'll improve these posts over time. Thanks.

Your contestants are Arrowhead, Fond du Lac, Germantown, Homestead, Manitowoc Lincoln, Neenah and Nicolet. And all signs point to Nicolet and Homestead as your frontrunners.

For Nicolet, it clearly won't be easy to replace conference player of the year, Bobby Vranek, who led the Knights to the state quarters last season. Junior Anatoli Berezovsky will most likely handle setting again and super soph Matt Klingspohn should be a key contributor. He recently returned from Tucson where he played at the 2008 USA Volleyball High Performance Championships for the USA Select Gold team. Also look for key contributions from junior Robbie Mayer (2007 all-conference), as well as Derek Riebau, Andrew Allen and Erik Petersen. (And, yeah, we probably missed someone.)

Senior Zach Johnson leads a talented group of Homestead Highlanders that will most likely also include these four juniors: middle Brian Hoffman and outsides Eric Grothman, Patrick Jones and Matthew Savage. (And, yeah again, we probably missed someone.)

But we didn't miss nearly as many someones as we will for Hartland Arrowhead. What we know for sure is that the team lost five all-conference seniors. That alone was enough to convince us that Nicolet and Homestead should probably be considered front-runners in this sectional. Any insights into the makeup of Arrowhead's 2008 team will be greatly appreciated--and will also probably end up in this very post eventually.
Now back to the preview: Every year, three Fox Valley Association teams--Fond du Lac, Neenah and Manitowoc Lincoln--get grouped into this Milwaukee-area sectional and, once again, it probably won't make their lives easy.

Neenah will more than likely not have any '09s on their roster at all. They will, however, have a strong returning nucleus of sophomores and juniors that includes Alex Malesa, Ryan Roillard, Jon Zerrien, Ben Erickson, Jordan Nelson and Alex Thomsen.
Manitowoc Lincoln and Fond du Lac both had respectable seasons in the FVA and should have some nice moments this fall as well. Again, if anyone has any additional insights, don't hesitate to share.
Finally, there's Germantown. They're listed on the WIAA brackets, but there's no mention of boys volleyball on their school's site. Can anyone explain?

Our prediction for Boys Sectional 2: Nicolet over Homestead in four on Homestead's home court.
Tomorrow: Boys Sectional 3 (but it won't be until very, very, very late--sorry)

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