Spring Preview: Freehold Boro Volleyball Looks to Build on Finish

The Freehold Boro High School boys volleyball team hopes to piggyback on its strong finish to last year when it opens the 2011 season Friday, April 1 playing against Christian Brothers Academy.

The Colonials never quit last year and picked up four of their five wins in an encouraging ending.

“I think we started playing some programs that were more on our level,” said Ben DiBiase, who begins his third season as Colonials head coach. “We ended up beating three teams that qualified for Shore Conference tournament. We beat Barnegat. Then we beat Toms River East and then Toms River North. They all had qualified in.

“The goal is to be competitive within the division and try to qualify for any postseason tournaments we can.”

Freehold Boro knows that those are lofty goals after a 5-14 season in which they graduated their setter Eric Fitzpatrick. With his reliable sets, instead of running a 5-1 formation, they will have to run a 4-2 and count on two setters. And making things just a bit tougher to start, the Colonials’ biggest threat, senior outside hitter Cody Clayton, was ill at the end of the state basketball tournament and hadn’t been cleared to participate through the first two weeks of preseason.

“He seems to be getting better, but he’s not able to participate yet,” DiBiase said. “Once we get him back, we should be more capable. If we can implement this new system, we should be OK.

“I’m looking to be more competitive this year,” he added. “We play a very difficult schedule in A North. We have Marlboro twice, Howell twice and CBA twice. If we can scratch one out of those, and then there’s Colts Neck, which was a little down last year, but will be good. That’s eight tough games. But we were very competitive toward the end of the year. We won our last four.”

Trying to build on that will be a Colonials team that does have some promising returning pieces. Instead of Fitzpatrick to set, they will use junior Brody Indursky and senior Evan Maguire. Both will be pulling double-duty.

“Brody swung back and forth between varsity and JV,” DiBiase said. “Now we’re asking him to not only defend in the back, but set when he’s in the front. If he can step up and set the ball like we need him to, I think we’ll be OK.

“Evan was defensive specialist last year. We’re asking him to take on the same role as Brody.”

They will be setting the ball to Clayton when he comes back and to junior opposite hitter Michael Holdorf, who is in his second year with the sport and got significant time last year.

“He’s pretty good,” DiBiase said. “Then we sprinkle a couple taller, 6-foot-2, 6-foot-3 kids in the middle and try to get the block. We don’t have a libero unfortunately. We don’t have anyone that can play that role. It hurts us a lot since unfortunately we’ll have our bigger guys passing from the back.

“Todd Cook and Matt Coulombe are going to be our middle hitters,” he added of the senior duo. “They were getting toward being middle hitters and blockers last year. We’re going to throw them in the role this year to let them be our force up the middle if they can.”

The other two seniors on the team are opposite hitter Nick Smith and outside hitter Ben Strausser. Smith is in his first year of volleyball; Strausser has been in the program three years.

Juniors Marc Controneo, an outside hitter, and Justin Eng, who plays defense, saw a lot of junior varsity time last year, but could help the Colonials this year.

Kyle Scoras is the lone sophomore on varsity. He’ll play outside hitter. Nick Krauss is the lone freshman. The middle hitter is raw, but does have some rare experience coming into the program after playing last year. The youngsters are part of the attempt to grow the program, which is just four years old.

“We’re having a hard time getting it to catch on,” DiBiase said. “Baseball is so big in Freehold. We’re trying to get more and kids involved with club volleyball.”

Having a bit more success this season can only help.