By Matt Stout
Staff Writer

Observer/Matt Stout Salem senior Debbie Seidel, left, and junior Nicole Duarte block a Nashua South hit during their team's 3-0 win on Oct. 4. The pair has been a force as the Blue Devils' middle hitters this season, helping lead Salem to a 13-0 record entering a match with Concord on Wednesday, Oct. 11.

Dan Young said his Salem girls volleyball team isn’t talking about it. But there’s no reason to believe the Blue Devils aren’t gunning for it.

“It” is an undefeated regular season, and entering a showdown at defending champion Concord on Wednesday, Oct. 11, Salem was well on its way toward it.

At 13-0, the Blue Devils have rolled through their Division I competition this season. They haven’t lost a game, let alone an entire match, in a month – a span off 33 straight games – and the two games they have dropped, in 3-1 wins over Bishop Guertin on Sept. 8 and Nashua North on Sept. 1, came to the No. 2 and No. 3 teams, respectively, in the league.

Young, in his second year as coach, knew his team was talented following a semifinal appearance last season. But he said he didn’t know it was this talented.

“And I’m still not sure,” Young said following his team’s 3-0 win on Oct. 4 over Nashua South, the third of four straight teams his squad held to fewer than 20 points in each game.

“We still have a lot of things we could improve on. Some of the offensive plays we try to run, our timing isn’t always there. And even when it’s not, the girls have adjusted well and made good plays out of something that was not perfect.

“But,” he added, “that’s minor.” Salem’s dominance, however, is of major proportions. Behind the Stoodley sisters, senior Casey and junior Danielle, the Blue Devils have experienced little trouble in reaching their goals.

At the beginning of the year, Young said “a couple mathematicians” on the team mapped out that 12 wins would most likely secure home-court advantage through the first two rounds of the playoffs. In turn, 13 would probably guarantee Salem the home-team designation in the finals at Pinkerton Academy, if it made it that far.

The Blue Devils have already reached that 13-win plateau with a 12-win Bishop Guertin team right behind them.

But, while the discussion has centered on giving Salem the easiest path through the playoffs, Young said not once has anyone uttered the word “undefeated.”

Instead, Young hopes the secret gets out on some of his standouts.

Casey Stoodley, a middle hitter last season and a right-side hitter during Junior Olympic play, has embraced her role as outside hitter to the point that Young called her the state’s “most improved player.”

Danielle Stoodley, on the other hand, has become the leader of the Salem defense a year after “taking a back seat” to last year’s seniors, Young said.

In the middle, junior Nicole Duarte and senior right-side hitter Debbie Seidel have solidified the Salem front line even if they don’t get all the credit, Young said, while sophomore Lauren Delaney, senior Kelsey Petty and sophomore Amanda Saab have continued to produce.

Together with a deep bench, they’ve put Salem on a path toward its third state championship and first since 1996.

“I think that everyone plays a lot of different positions, and when you put them all together out there, it just clicks,” Petty said. “When we get a point, we get excited, but mostly, it’s really, ‘Let’s get down to business and do it.’”