SHREWSBURY — Hailey Orloski and Jalen Sullivan ducked. They didn’t want to appear in Case High School’s state-championship banner photo on the other side of the net.
Minutes earlier Saturday afternoon, the Cardinals clinched the Division III girls’ volleyball state championship 3-0 (26-24, 25-20, 25-12) at Shrewsbury High School.
The loss ended Frontier Regional School’s run of six consecutive state titles. Case bookended “The Streak,” as the Cardinals were the last team to beat Frontier in a postseason game back in 2009.
“It’s not surprising that it’s Case,” Frontier coach Sean MacDonald said. “They’ve been waiting to pick us off for a long time.”
The Red Hawks prevailed in five sets last year in the state semifinal and in four in the 2014 title game.
Saturday looked like it might feature more of the same at first. Frontier (12-14) jumped out to a 10-3 lead in the opening set helped by four Case (24-2) service errors.
“We were really pumped to be here and play here,” Frontier junior Lauren Davenport said.
The Cardinals eventually settled in and brought the set within three points at 16-13. Frontier pushed to set point at 24-22 after Case’s seventh service error. But Case scored the next four points to win the set 26-24 on a block.
“That was the thing, to try to get us to play like it was any other game,” Case coach Michaela Goncalves said. “It’s hard to channel that out. We say fear is something you can control, nerves is something you can control, so let’s control it.”
Case controlled most of the rest of the match. Despite falling behind 3-0 in the second set, the Cardinals won 25-20 with the help of a 4-0 run after a 13-13 tie.
“They came here ready to win knowing what we were this year,” Davenport said. “We didn’t let down. They just had the ambition that we thought we had but didn’t really pull through with.”
The Cardinals led the third set by as many as 13 points and finished the match at 25-12. It was Case’s first state title since 2009.
“We had six seniors that were there last year when they took us to five and we lost the fifth set 16-14,” Goncalves said. “Those girls bringing that experience, being Frontier on the other side or any other team, I knew we were going to fight our hardest.”
Frontier, conversely, featured zero seniors on this year’s roster. The Red Hawks had to replace every rotation piece from last year’s state-title team. At one point during the season they had a stretch of 10 losses in 11 games.
“In that stretch, they were like ‘We lost, but we played a whole lot better than we did three days ago,’” MacDonald said. “We were in the deep end of the pool. I can’t say how proud I am of this team to even be here today.”
Frontier qualified for the postseason by winning its last match of the regular season, then won the Western Mass. semifinal, Western Mass. final and state semifinal in five sets. So, even the Red Hawks were surprised to be playing for an unlikely seventh straight Saturday.
“There was a lot of pressure at first. Then we realized we’re here for a reason. We’re really proud that we even got here,” Davenport said. “People didn’t think we were going to be here, and we proved them wrong, we proved ourselves wrong.”