The West Hempstead boys’ volleyball team proved to first-year coach Mariah Tyler and the rest of Nassau County that the Rams were no joke.
A new group under a new coach jelled as the season went along, hitting its stride in the second half of the campaign, winning four of the final five matches and moving to second place in Nassau Conference 2D.
A postseason berth wasn’t in the cards, but the season was an unmitigated success for Tyler.
“I think they've gained a lot of confidence in this last part of the season and they ended it on a really positive note,” Tyler said. “I'm really happy with everything we were able to accomplish in the season, especially the last couple of weeks.”
Tyler took over for longtime coach Andrew Wilson, who retired at the end of last season. And like some of her players, she made the jump from JV to varsity.
The first part of the season was about finding a rhythm and identifying who the leaders were going to be.
There were also some agonizingly close defeats, including three consecutive five-setters to Sewanahaka, Carey and Plainedge after opening the season with wins over Academy Charter and Manhasset.
The turning point came when the calendar flipped to October and West Hempstead beat Oyster Bay in five sets. The Rams would lose just twice the rest of the season.
“I think the kids just proved to themselves like, hey, we can hang in there tough, and we can finish our games,” Tyler said. “And ever since then, the energy and the teamwork on the team just kept on getting better and better.”
There were just two returning starters, including Sam Santos Robles, who was going to be a bit hitter for the Rams but broke his ankle just five matches into the season.
The other senior, Jeremy Ramos Romero, an All-County libero a year ago, was among the county’s leaders in digs with 255.
Junior setter Lucas Trinh was one of the leaders in assists in Nassau with 493, sophomore Leo Papangelopoulos’ 269 kills were up there among the leaders in the county, junior Henry Ortiz was a bit of a Swiss-army knife, playing right side and defensive specialist, joining Ramos Romero as one of the leaders of the defense and senior Brock Walker provided much-needed assistance as a right side and with his blocking.
Maybe the biggest strength of the team though was the humor shared throughout the squad.
“I could tell in the last half of the season they were just using their foundation of friendship and their humor, and just being good teammates with each other to let the mistakes roll off and get back to playing the game,” Tyler said. “I think that was the big difference-maker for us at the end of the season.”
With a core group returning and team chemistry high, Tyler could only smile when thinking of the prospects of next season.