On Tuesday January 29, Yeshiva's volleyball team made its season debut against Ramapo College. Although the Macs would lose the match 3-0, this year's team shows some promise. The squad is headed up by captains Uzi Beer, Michael Bernstein, and Yaakov Sheinfeld. The latter is new to the team and plays blocker and striker.

For their first game, YU played fairly well, but the team clearly lacks experience, as evidenced by some basic errors. Some substitutions were missed, positions got mixed up, and many serves didn't even make it over the net. This lack of coordination and performance clearly reflects the loss of Captain Michael Bernstein, who was unable to play but was still very supportive from the bench. Alex Hendeles the team's starting setter played very well, placing some beautiful sets to Uzi Beer, Ira Karoll, Yaakov Sheinfeld, and Daniel Zeltzer.

Karoll made some key plays, but he also made plenty of rookie mistakes, including touching the net multiple times throughout the match. With time and practice, he will develop into a solid and consistent player that this team will be able to depend on. While most of the players are new to the team this year, only a few lack any prior volleyball experience.

Starting with this year, the rally point scoring system is in place. This scoring system allows a point to be scored every play, regardless of possession. The sets are therefore played to 30 points, as opposed to the 15 points that would decide a match in previous years. In Yeshiva's first set alone, against the number two seed in the conference, they scored 20 points.

The crowd's reaction to the team this year was very positive. Senior Aaron Friedman remarked, "Those guys were much better than last year's team. It wasn't as embarrassing as last year. There were actually some decent volleys." Jacob Asher, a junior, went as far as to say, "The team looks awesome this year."

In past years, the volleyball team has not attracted much of a crowd. As a result, the administration does not put much money into it. The contrast was clearly evidenced by a number of significant differences between Ramapo's and YU's squads. Ramapo arrived at YU with jerseys, warm-ups, and 5 assistant coaches. Ramapo also has more than twice as many games scheduled as Yeshiva. The YU team was outfitted with new jerseys this year, but has only the standard YU Athletics sweatsuits, and only one assistant coach.

This year's team has the opportunity to restore some pride to the volleyball program and show the administration that it is a team worth supporting. As Coach Corona said in English, "The team this year has talent."