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Sports

In Its Seventh Year, Boys Volleyball Team Looks Toward Next Step

In its seventh year as a program, the Manchester boys volleyball team has taken off and is now looking for a "taste of winning"

Manchester High School does not carry with it any sort of steep volleyball tradition and the local power teams would not exactly tremble at the sight of the Hawks on their schedule.

They may, however, get a little nervous once the Hawks take the floor for warm-ups.

While the Manchester volleyball team may not be all that intimidating on paper, they have fast developed a reputation as a one of the most athletically imposing teams around. They have fused a mix of athletes from other sports with a core of experienced varsity volleyball players to form a team that is not yet among the elite in Ocean County, but is catching the attention of many in the Shore Conference volleyball community with its second straight strong season.

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“We have a lot of athletic ability,” said coach Gregory Hope. “Some coaches don’t even let their kids watch us warm up, because we have that much raw athleticism that it can get in people’s heads. The process for us has been turning that athleticism into performance and ultimately into wins.”

Hope started the volleyball program at Manchester in 2005 and after spending five years climbing toward a .500 record, the Hawks broke through last year with a 16-7 record and a No. 4 seed in the Shore Conference Tournament.

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Through 12 games this season, the Hawks are 10-3 and appear poised to make a run at an even better record this year, even with a team that plays only two seniors and sports a number of key players who just picked up the sport within the last two calendar years.

“I’m a physical education teacher, so I get a chance to see every student we have in an athletic and competitive setting,” Hope said. “I had (junior) Evan Jones in my class two years ago and I knew he was a basketball player, so I told him that if he was looking for something to do in the spring, he should come out for volleyball.

“A lot of guys who play other sports don’t really think of volleyball as a serious option or alternative, but I always tell them, especially the basketball guys, that volleyball has a lot of the same elements that basketball has. The guys who have given it a shot, I’ve found, really take a liking to it.”

No player better typifies the kind of athletes Hope has been able to work into the program than Jones and his younger brother, Mason Jones. Evan Jones is a three-year varsity player in his senior year and has ascended to team captain and ambassador for the program after he started as a basketball player who wanted to give the sport a trial run two years ago.

“I was a little skeptical when I went out for the team,” Evan Jones said. “Coach Hope asked me to come out for the team and I thought it was something that I was just going to get bored of, but I actually really like it. It’s a lot like basketball in that you have to be athletic and work together as a team and I think that’s what a lot of the guys like about.”

Mason Jones was a starter as a sophomore on the basketball team during its run to the NJSIAA South Jersey Group III championship game this year and went out for the volleyball team this season after watching his brother play last year.

Even as he learns on the job during his first season on the volleyball court, he has still been one of the more dominant players at the net in the Shore Conference thanks to his 6-foot-2-inch frame and superior leaping ability.

“I went to my brother’s games when I was a freshman and I kind of got into it so I went out for the team this year,” Mason Jones said. “A lot of what I like about basketball is what I like about volleyball. Going up for a spike is just like going up for a dunk, except you get to do it more.”

Junior Jared Mondy is another athlete in the mold of Mason Jones – a guard in the basketball program who can put on a show in volleyball warm-ups and swarm the net during the games. At one stretch during a game in Manchester’s 2-0 win over Monsignor Donovan last Wednesday, Mondy recorded four straight points, the final two of which came on blocks at the net.

Manchester is not all about the high-flying acrobatics of the Jones brothers, Mondy and sophomore Anthony Cook, who is another in the crop of front-line athletes.

Junior Ryan Pecora is a well-rounded player who can play on the ground and in the air and has blossomed since playing his first ever volleyball season with the junior varsity team as a sophomore last year.

“I played baseball as a freshman and messed up my shoulder,” Pecora said. “When the spring came around the next year, I was looking for something else to do and volleyball seemed like the natural fit.”

Junior Hakan Yildirim is a soccer player during the fall, but unlike most of the players on the Hawks roster, he played organized volleyball before high school. Yildirim went to middle school in Lakewood before moving to Manchester and played on the middle school volleyball team there, something he could not do at that level in Manchester.

While most of the team is made up of tall players who are adept at blocking and spiking the ball, Yildirim is under six-foot tall and specializes in digging the ball off the ground and setting up his teammates.

“We have a lot of guys who can get up around the net and that makes my job easy,” Yildirim said. “I just try to keep the ball alive and set those guys up for the finish.”

With a win over Barnegat Tuesday, Manchester is ready for a rematch against Central, which handed the Hawks one of its three losses, on Thursday. Manchester won seven straight games to open the season before enduring a three-game losing streak, which started with a 2-0 loss to Central and continued for duration of the team’s spring break week.

“We just weren’t doing the things coach was telling us to do,” Evan Jones said of the three-game losing streak. “I think we got a little full of ourselves and didn’t realize that there are teams out there who are good enough to beat us. We were undefeated but we still weren’t doing everything we needed to do.”

The Shore Conference Tournament will begin later this month and while the Hawks still need to do some work in order to secure a top four seed again this year, they still feel like they are ready to build on last season's success.

“The goal is to first get over the hump and win a game in the Shore Conference and state tournaments,” Hope said. “I have high expectations for this program and I think we’re capable of a lot, but I taking that first step and getting a taste of winning is big. From there, the sky’s the limit.”

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