By Meghan Foley
Hometown Weekly Staff
Last week, the boys’ volleyball team hosted King Philip Regional High School for their only matchup of the season. They entered the match with a 10–3 record to King Philip’s 5–7 and beat them 3–0 last year.
The Warriors took the first two sets pretty definitively, 25–12 and 25–17. However, the third was much more stressful.
"Usually in the third set where a team is down two, I always want to give credit to the opponent,” explained Head Coach Jerry Shu.” They’re gonna want to battle hard to stay in it, and they did. We made a couple of mistakes near the end, but we refocused, played one thing at a time, one point at a time, and closed out the game, so that’s all we need to do.”
The score stayed close at the very beginning before the Warriors began to pull ahead, at one point taking a six-point lead at 13–7. However, King Philip began to close in after a few missed shots by Medfield. King Philip swung into the lead at 22–21 after a serve that the Warriors called out but that the refs ruled inbounds. Medfield’s next serve went out, and they called a timeout, now in a dangerous position down 23–21. 
Coming back from the timeout, the Warriors gave up another point, putting King Philip in the position to win the set. However, Karim Tayara and Elliot Webster scored two of Medfield’s next three points, tying it at 24–24. A block by Soren Krauss gave Medfield their 25th point, but they needed one more since a team must win a set by at least two points. King Philip took a time out, but when they returned, Webster blocked an attack to win the match.
Looking ahead, Coach Shu said, "We have six more [matches] to go; we still have to—as the boys say—‘lock in' and finish the season strong. I’m not worried about playoffs, but our focus is 
to make sure we get into that competitive mindset so we can bring it into the playoffs and not just rest on our record in the regular season.”
Of those six regular season matches remaining after the King Philip match, two are at home. The first is this evening, Thursday, May 14th, at 6:00 against Hopkinton (9–4). Medfield beat the Hillers 3–0 last month and won both of their matches with that same score last season. Then on Monday the 18th at 5:00, the Warriors will have their senior night, hosting Norwood (0–12), who they also beat 3–0 in April and twice last year.
The Warriors’ schedule can be found online at arbiterlive.com. 
