9/9/24

The first week of the New Jersey High School Girl’s volleyball season is on the books as the gals start up what seems to be the biggest season ever in the Garden State. The state database is attempting to record individual set totals per player this season. NJP has always based statistics per set on the stats divided by the number of sets played by the team. If a player misses a game or a tournament, or the player is injured a misses matches, the data becomes very inaccurate. This category will become the most important stat recorded for that player as all the other stats will pivot off this number. A preliminary view of the early season data dump shows that scorekeepers must do a better job at entering this new stat field. Sometimes entire teams are missing the individual player set numbers and many others are not recording sets played despite the player having stats recorded for the match. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE check this information for accuracy before loading in the statistics by game.

Let’s see what NJ stars are out of the gate quickly on the stat front:

Starting with some attack stats…

Many of the Millburn girls have jumped out in front after their early season out of state tour. Some girls have already reached 20 sets played. Divya Issac leads all players in NJ with 56 kills overall. Rachel Williams of Union Catholic is second with 34.

You get a much better understanding of the offensive impact when you look at data by set. This creates an apple to apples approach and evens up the analysis based on each set played. After reviewing the per set totals in the database, we are holding off presenting these numbers as they are not accurate. We expect coaches and statisticians will be updating the new field “set total” by player as the season progresses. We will shout out several players who appear off to great starts on the attack including: Rachel Williams of Union Catholic, Mia Izzo of Park Ridge, Gwen Atkins of Morristown, Emma Fowler of Bogota, Natasha Clarke of Mountain Lakes, Ashley Markle of Old Bridge, and Hailey Mack of Bishop Eustace.

Eliana Goodman of Millburn has already put down 31 blocks for the Millers. That is over 22 sets but is still an enormous amount for the first couple of weeks of playing. She is 21 better than Natasha Clark of Mountain Lakes. Sophomore Aleah Sunkins of Franklin and Senior Adele Kasper of Parsippany Hills have 9 on the young season.

Millburn is dominating dig statistics thus far due to their extended amount of matches played. They hold the top three slots in digs in NJ. Senior Charli Haase has lifted 127 digs already and junior Lily Philipov has surpassed 100 as well, with 103. Divya Issac of Millburn has 76. Junior Izzy Yarenis of Park Ridge had 52, and Trista Davis of Burlington Township and Ashley Carter of Northern Burlington have 49 and 43 respectively.

As for setters, freshman Jannah Khalil of Old Bridge is leading the state in assists with 41. Some other young stars are emerging on the setter front as well. Kaitlyn Rambo of Our Lady of Mercy and Ali Lubach of St. Rose are sophomores to watch. Senior Madison Walia Peters is off to a great start for Hoboken.

Freshman make up only 4% of current varsity roster with 88 Class of 2028 players hitting the court thus far of the over 2,000 players in the state. Some freshman standouts to get on your radar: Jannah Khalil has posted 38 digs and 41 assists, leading the state in the latter category. Izabella Osoria of Mount Olive leads all freshman in NJ with 14 kills and also has 21 digs to her credit. Nikola Osinksi of Franklin has lifted 23 digs thus far, second among freshman. And Riley Burg has 21 digs and 8 assists for Northern Burlington. Abigail Fenton of Hillsborough is second in the state for Class of 2028 with 10 kills.