Now in his second season in charge of the Bridgewater-Raritan High
School girls’ volleyball team, coach Josh Everett proclaimed everyone coming up in his
program should follow the footsteps of the graduating senior Class of 2025.
On Tuesday evening, September 10, in Bridgewater-Raritan’s home opener, these seniors propelled the Panthers to their first victory of 2024.
Despite trailing by five points early both in games one and two, Bridgewater-Raritan (1-2, 1-1)
rallied to take both games and defeat Hillsborough (0-3, 0-2) for the first time since 2021 by a
score of 2-0 (25-21, 25-15) Tuesday, September 10, at Vaughn Stapleton Gymnasium in
Bridgewater.
“Stay consistent, one point at a time, but you have to buy into ‘one point at a time’,” Everett revealed.. “If something goes well, be excited for yourself and the good things you do. You
can’t just wait for big plays. We have a lot of seniors on the team and a lot of leadership. I don’t
worry about going down, because we have a lot of good volleyball players. We just keep on
grinding point after point just like we did at practice and summer workouts.”
Bridgewater-Raritan was paced during the day by seniors Irene Papanastasiou, Liel Raines-Mosh, Emily Evaristo,Faye Gallou and Emily Leppert and junior Jahniah Bishop.
“The reason that we were able to come back is because we’re very united this year as a team in
general, but also because we kept our energy very high even when we were down by those
points,” Papanastasiou said of her squad’s successful rallies. “We still made
sure to keep cheering, keep being loud, and keep everyone on the bench cheering for us. We
were able to come back because of our energy and because of our team.”