October 1, 2023

We are now in month 2 of three for the NJ high school girl’s volleyball season. Most of the stages have been set from the first few weeks of play and we have clear definition on which teams will compete for state titles and which teams are focused on improvement. There is a new ranking updated last night and IHA continues to distance itself from the rest of the field after their demolition of former unbeaten Southern on Saturday. In the Rams defense, it’s always tough to spend a couple of hours on a bus on the GSP before a big match and then have a hyped crowd to contend with but Southern serves the same dish when team travel south. These teams are much closer on a neutral court and the rating system reflects that.

Sparta has been near the top of the algorithm since day 1, The next 10 days will greatly influence the Spartans final ranking as they debark on a critical part of their seasons schedule. They face Roxbury, West Morris Central, and Bergen Tech this week, all solid squads. And then have UCC power Westfield and #1 IHA the following week, If they run the table, we can see a new team atop the rankings but it’s a big ask.

Both Livingston and Princeton are unbeaten, in fact bot teams have yet to lose a set. Both Old Tappan and Demarest are super strong teams and have the ability to knock off any team in NJ on a given day.

Let’s take a quick sidebar here as Clarkstown hosted their annual invitational tournament this weekend. Many New Jersey teams were invited including Old Tappan, Demarest, Paramus, River Dell, and Ridgewood. 15 New York high school teams participated. Demarest and Old Tappan were undefeated in pool play and Demarest, OT, and River Dell advanced to the Gold playoff round. OT and Demarest ended up in the final (GO NJ!!!) with Demarest taking the one set championship game 25-16. It was a very nice showing by NJ teams for bragging rights.

Monroe knocking off Donovan Catholic was a huge inter-conference game that will have implications in the ratings. The algorithm will shift GMC teams like Old Bridge, East Brunswick, and Monroe higher and shore teams like Vianney, Donovan, and Barnegat, lower.

We have been getting a lot of feedback on Hudson Catholic being lower in the rankings despite an undefeated record and one of the highest average margins of victory in the state. The Hawks have chosen to stay in Hudson County for the majority of their schedule and this is crushing them in the algorithm. There was a time when HC would schedule the top teams in NJ and even go out of state for a higher level of competition, but this year was not the case. We love Hawk senior Sydney Salazar and what she has done this year statistically, but the strength of schedule is killing her in the player rater as well.

You have to go back to 2017 when Elmwood Park had their last winning season, That was an awesome year where they finished 25-6. This years squad has reeled off 7 wins in their last 8 games, including a huge win this week against Bergenfield. Senior Angelique Ong, sophomore Francesca Bizzaro, and senior setter Ericka Trajano have been playing at the top of their game.

Thirteen undefeated teams remain in NJ for the Girl’s Fall high school volleyball season. It’s always so interesting to see the wide disparity of ratings for each team. Some are at the top, and others are in the lower middle of the 322 teams in the state. After the first week, you can have almost 100 teams with no losses but the number keeps twiddling down as each week goes by. By the end of week three, it is usually near a dozen or so and that will drop in half by the end of next week. In the old system, with a tournament of champions, you could only have 1 undefeated team at the end of the year and most times there were not any. In the current multi-state champion setup by group, we can see more.

13 Undefeated Teams remain

The toughest schedules faced thus far, through three weeks, belong to both Mendham and Montville at 26.

Kent Place, Morris Knolls, North Hunterdon, West Morris Central and Ridgewood all opponents schedule strength at 24 or higher.

In the NJP top 20, the toughest schedules belong to Westfield, Demarest, Old Tappan, and Hunterdon Central. The easiest schedule for teams in the Top 20 belongs to Donovan Catholic, Southern, and Princeton at 19.

The top 5 teams with largest margin of victory on average are Bergen Tech (11.5), Princeton (11.2), Livingston (10.4), Hudson Catholic (10.2), and Immaculate Heart (9.9).

The best set win percentage for teams that have played more than 10 sets is Princeton (28-0) 1.000, Livingston (24-0) 1.000, IHA (26-1) .963, Sparta (22-1) .957, and Hudson Catholic (18-1) .947.

The teams with most sets played through the end of September are Donovan Catholic at 35, Morris Knolls with 33, and West Essex, Hackensack, St. John Vianney, Pinelands and Ranconcas Valley at 32.

1,643 matches have been played this season so far.

The makeup of players recording stats thus far are as follows:

Seniors 1,430 42%

Juniors 1,121 33%

Sophomores 594 17%

Freshman 203 6%

NA 82 2%

TOTAL 3,430 81% of teams report individual stats so we project total players at over 4,000.

The NJP win percentage on the entire schedule thus far this Fall is 90.4%.