MISQUAH — Pike beat Sandstone at home 3–1 last Tuesday — 25–21, 23–25, 25–19, 25–17 — and is 4–2, which is the best start the program has had since 2019 and which Coach Leah Peltola declines to describe as a good start on the grounds that it is September.

The serving remains the thing. Pike missed eleven serves against Sandstone, seven of them in the second set, which is the set it lost. Peltola has been running serving at the end of practice rather than the beginning since the Pine City loss, on the theory that a serve at the end of a match is a tired serve and ought to be practiced tired.

The junior varsity is 4–1 and, per the varsity coach’s repeated and unsolicited observation, still serves better than the varsity.

Peltola is also down two players on Saturday mornings, both now running cross country, which she wrote a letter to this newspaper to arrange and which she brings up roughly every other conversation. “I did it on purpose and I would do it again and it is costing me,” she said. “All three of those are true.”

Pike is at Hinckley tonight, 5:30 and 7, and home against Cambridge a week from tonight.

Pike has now taken a set off every team it has played, which Peltola notes is a different statistic than winning and is the one she watches in September.