“I’ll take a loss here,” Chautauqua Lake head coach Joanne Meadows said about the defeat. “I think this is a team we can beat. I think there are some things we have to fix. They’re a very good team and they do some things really great. I think we’re going to be a very good team, we’re still young and we haven’t played this level of competition in a long time. I think this is a little bit of an eye opener for us, but we have a month and a half to fix some things we have to fix.”

While many teams are jumping into their league schedules, Chautauqua Lake will continue with some of the best tests in the section as the Eagles moved away from the Chautauqua-Cattaraugus Athletic Association Division 3 competition with an independent schedule.

“I want to go against the teams like that,” Meadows said about the decision to go independent. “Playoffs is an open tournament, we could lose every single game and still get into playoffs and win it. I want to play teams like this now, so next year we don’t get to a team like Falconer and panic.”

Chautauqua Lake opened its season with a win over Section VI Class C finalist Falconer, hosted the powerhouse Portville, will travel to Class B champion Fredonia tonight and host 2024 Class C2 champion Randolph on Thursday.

Chautauqua Lake’s Noli Paddock attempts to spike the ball past Portville’s Gaitley Maiolo (13) and Ali Haynes (22) on Monday. P-J photo by Christian Storms

“Beating a ‘D’ school doesn’t do us any good,” Meadows said. “I would rather play big schools and take a chance getting a win and if you get a loss you get a loss, but grow from the loss. I think growing from a loss in the season helps us in the postseason. We just played Falconer and they’re very good; we’ve played in three huge tournaments. We played in Gates-Chili, then we played at Penfield and we just played at St. Mary’s of Lancaster. … Today against a perennial state champ and now tomorrow we play Fredonia and then we have Randolph on Thursday. I’ve tried to pick some teams that are perennially solid teams and teams that maybe we have to face later. Like Fredonia is bigger than us, but I know it’s well coached and a good team. I think playing those teams gets us where I want us to be.”

Moving into an independent schedule not only gives the Eagles a test it might see in the playoffs each night, but also has a chance to better improve their seeding when the postseason approaches playing teams Class C or larger.

“I really only lost one senior from last year, so I know my kids pretty well,” Meadows stated. “I think last year we played in the league we had been playing in for a while and not that those teams aren’t good, they play a little different than we do. They’re also ‘D’ so even when we beat them we’re not getting power points for them, so I said this year I want to be playing against top competitors all season. The teams we’re going to see in playoffs or the teams that are going to be in playoffs for ‘B’ or ‘A’ and I want to play those teams so by the time we get in playoffs my kids have been against tough competition.”

When Chautauqua Lake won the Class D state title two years ago, many of the girls on this team were a part of that roster or even started. Since then only a few girls have graduated from the program and many of the key players remain underclassmen with only two seniors.

“I really believe that this team is not only good for this year, but I only have two seniors,” Meadows added about the future. “We’re also good for this year and the year after. For me the best way to build them and to where they need to be for playoffs was to see if we could get them to go independent to get them that challenge all year. Like I’ve said before, if I challenge them up here they’ll get up here and if I challenge them only on this level (low) that’s where they’ll compete.”

Standing out against a veteran Portville squad were eighth-grader Brina Jacobson scoring six kills, two assists, six digs and two blocks; freshman Kinslee Motter providing seven kills, two assists, two digs and a block; sophomore Noli Paddock adding seven kills and three digs; and junior setter Karagan Fairbank dishing 22 assists with two kills and five digs.

“Brina is an eighth-grader and fantastic,” Meadows said about her roster. “Noli is a 10th-grader this year finally, Alice (Scarpine) and Kinslee are both freshmen, Karagan, Sydney (Williams), Makenna (Smith) those kids are all juniors that have been playing with me since the state champion year. We are still pretty young and have a lot of talent.”

Even at the beginning of this season, Chautauqua Lake (1-1) showed how close it can play with Portville (3-0, 1-0 CCAA D1), going back and forth down to the wire in the opening set for an eventual 26-24 loss. The Panthers showed their mite in the second set cruising to a 25-11 victory and then pulled away in the third after a close start, but the Eagles now know they can hang with the best.

“Coming into tonight,” Meadows added. “The kids were almost, Portville has got a reputation and a well-deserved reputation, they’re very good. It’s kind of tough to be us, a kind of small, young team coming in and playing them. Their reputation is almost more than these guys think they’re ready for, so for them to get that close in that first set to see they can play with a team like that, that’s what I want at this point in the season. I said to them, I feel like we’re right where we want to be right now.”