The West Orange Mountaineers will head out on the road to challenge the Columbia Cougars at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday. The two teams each escaped (but just barely!) with wins against their previous opponents.
West Orange took a loss when they played away from home on Tuesday, but their home fans gave them all the motivation they needed on Friday. They won by a set and slipped past Jefferson Township 2-1.
The match was a true back-and-forth as no team won consecutive sets, but in the end it was West Orange who won the one that mattered. The final score came out to 25-18, 13-25, 25-18.

Maelat Kidane
10/03/25 vs Jefferson Township | 9 |
09/30/25 @ Montclair | 5 |
09/25/25 @ Belleville | 6 |
09/22/25 vs East Orange Campus | 5 |
09/19/25 vs Montclair Kimberley Academy | 3 |
+ 2 more games |
West Orange can attribute much of their success to Maelat Kidane, who had nine digs and one assist, and Nayeli Roodriguez, who had 21 assists and one block. That's the most digs Kidane has posted over her last seven contests.
Meanwhile, it was close, but on Friday Columbia sidestepped Summit for a 3-2 victory. The win made it back-to-back victories for the Cougars.
Columbia was actually outscored in aggregate across those five sets (114-106), but they still managed to win. Once all was said and done, the final score wound up at 27-25, 27-25, 15-25, 21-25, 16-14.
Columbia's win bumped their record up to 2-5. As for West Orange, their victory bumped their record up to 8-5.
West Orange beat Columbia 2-0 when the teams last played back in September. The rematch might be a little tougher for the Mountaineers since the team won't have the home-court advantage this time around. We'll see if the change in venue makes a difference.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps