HOLYOKE – “The Streak,” as it’s known around Frontier Regional School, appeared all but over.
The Red Hawks trailed Millbury High School 2-0 after the second set of Wednesday’s state Division III semifinal at Holyoke Community College and just watched the Woolies rip off 11 straight points to win Set 2 and start the third.
“I was thinking it could be over and wasn’t liking how it was going to end,” Frontier coach Sean MacDonald said.
Then it appeared — that ethereal quality surrounding Frontier’s volleyball program. The one that’s provided six straight state titles and 12 Western Mass. championships.
Frontier won the third set 25-13 to keep its season alive.
“We talk during timeouts and we say ‘Remember the name on the back of our jerseys,” Frontier junior Selayna Bathurst said. “There was a lot of camaraderie and high positivity. Everything just clicked.”
The Red Hawks won the fourth set 25-21 to set up a decisive fifth. They took a 10-6 lead in that fifth set.
“You could see some of the nerves kick in. Some of them tensed up a little bit,” Millbury coach Mike McKeon said. “Some of our better players didn’t have their best games of the year. You can’t win when your players don’t play to their strengths.”
Frontier scored the next five points, finishing the set 15-6 and the match 3-2 (23-25, 18-25, 25-13, 25-21, 15-6) on a blast from Bathurst’s right arm.
“I saw the set and was like ‘It’s over,’” she said. “I saw it and went ‘Swing to end this.’”
Her 10th kill ended the match but kept The Streak alive. Frontier (12-13) hasn’t lost a postseason match since 2009.
The Red Hawks will play Case at noon Saturday at Shrewsbury High School.
The Red Hawks came back from a 2-0 deficit for the first time during that stretch. It was the first time they’d faced one.
“We’ve never dug out of a 2-0 hole,” MacDonald said.
Millbury (20-5) took the first two sets with help from Frontier errors. The Red Hawks committed 13 hitting errors in the first two sets out of 27 for the match and made 15 service errors and four double contacts.
“We felt like we had too much responsibility for the points they were getting,” MacDonald said. “Once we started to clean that up it becomes a much easier game.”
McKeon understood the gifts Frontier was giving his team in the first two sets.
“We weren’t playing our best volleyball,” he said. “We knew that Frontier, just because they were down 2-0, wasn’t going to stop playing.”
Millbury scored the first four points of the third set on three Frontier errors.
The Red Hawks tied the match at 5 on an ace by setter Ella Deane, who had 34 assists in the match. They scored 10 of the next 11 points to take a 15-6 lead in Set 3.
Lauren Davenport finished it with one of her team-leading 14 kills.
“It didn’t look like there was a lot of fire in them in the first couple sets. Then they woke up,” MacDonald said. “Like, hey, let’s remind these guys they’re playing the state champs. We’re the state champs. We’ve got to remember who we are.”
Preserving the Frontier volleyball legacy — and the streak — has been on the Red Hawks’ minds since they began practice in August. Frontier has zero seniors and returned no starters from last year’s state-championship team. Only Bathurst, Davenport, Deane, Hailey Orloski and Grace Randall played more than one set last season.
“None of us have played in the state final,” Bathurst said. “I’m a really proud captain to be a part of this team.”
But the expectation is still there. It’s Frontier. But MacDonald has known all season that this isn’t a typical Red Hawks team.
“We’ve never lost that much and had so little coming back from the year before. They’re really concerned about our reputation, our legacy, our history that they wanted to represent that in the best possible way,” he said. “I feel regardless of what happened today or Saturday, they have represented Frontier volleyball to the highest levels anybody could have asked for.”
Yet they’ll play for a seventh straight state title Saturday. They are, after all, the Frontier Red Hawks.