The Kennedy boys volleyball team picked up their first win of the season with a sweep of Lawrence on Monday at home.

The Cougars (1-2) defeated the winless Golden Tornadoes (0-4), 25-9, 25-16 and 25-15.

Senior middleman Ben Canarick led the way with nine kills, followed by Steven Gassert with eight. Gary Anderson, who added four kills, combined with Jake Sherman for 33 total assists in the three sets.

“We’re very inexperienced this year to start the season. We knew it was going to take a couple of matches in order to get us to the point where we started to gel,” Dennis Ringel, Kennedy head coach, said. “Today is an example of us starting to gel. We got a long ways to go, but we are starting to come together as a team.”

Kennedy controlled the tempo throughout the whole first set with unforced errors hindering the Lawrence offense from the start. The Cougars closed the 16-point win with a Canarick spike down the middle.

In the second set, Anderson gave Kennedy a solid lead with his turn at service. His team led 9-2 after the short run, forcing Lawrence into a timeout. The Cougars charged to a 2-0 lead after libero Adam Lowell served up a solid streak of his own to close out the set.

In the third and decisive set, Lawrence gained back some momentum, but the Kennedy serving game and offensive sets proved to be too much as the Cougars got into the win column for the first time this fall.

“We’ve been playing competitively up to this point, but it is just a combination of everybody having a bad day and just not getting any breaks,” George Klein, Lawrence head coach, said. “We’ll work hard and we’ll get better.”

Kennedy will host West Hempstead (2-1) on Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. Lawrence will play on the road again on Wednesday at Hewlett (0-4) at 4:30 p.m.