By Roger Gordon

Correspondent

Aurora is in first place in the Suburban League American Conference with an 8-1 record and is 13-4 overall.

The Greenmen played like it on Tuesday in a 27-25, 21-25, 25-22, 25-20 win at conference rival Revere, helping to erase the sting of their first conference defeat of the season five days earlier, on Sept. 18, at home to Highland.

“We’re chasing a banner,” head coach Katie Cicione said. “We talked about the Highland game. How are we going to be two to three points better against good competition? And how are we going to handle tough moments? I had no doubt that we were well prepared to compete. The girls played hard and played with a goal, they played mature. We came up big. That was a really crucial win for us to get back on track.”

Because of some injuries, senior right-side hitter Annie Treccia got an opportunity to play.

“Annie really took charge of the moment and played tough with good leadership, good objectives,” said Cicione. “That was not only a big moment for her, but a big moment for our whole team. It speaks about the depth we have within our program.”

The loss to the Hornets was a battle royale.

The score was 25-13, 24-26, 12-25, 29-27, 15-13.

“We’ve had some success this season, but something that comes with success is that you’re going to get everybody’s best match every night,” the coach said. “We have a culture that has a lot of expectation behind it. You could feel how bad Highland wanted it. I think we wanted

it just as bad, but we had to figure out how to be two to three points better under pressure.

Unfortunately, we fell short of that. It was a really good match across the board, and I think our whole program has a lot of respect for their program.”

Leading the way were junior outside hitter Aubrey Verdova with 20 kills, 15 digs, nine service points, an ace, a block and an assist and senior middle hitter Addyson Rumskey with 11 kills, five blocks and two digs.

“Addy has grown a lot not only physically but within her game in the past year,” Cicione said. “She’s somebody we rely on heavily. She came up big in pressure situations against Highland.”