Turners Falls High School may have gone into its WMass Division 3 Girls Volleyball quarterfinal match as the higher seed but the fourth-seeded Thunder had plenty to worry about against fifth-seeded Lenox.
Monday night’s meeting was the second of the season between the two teams, the first meeting coming back in September in Lenox with the Millionaires rolling to a 3-0 victory.
Rather than dwell on that loss, Turners Falls focused on the task at hand and got revenge in the form of a thrilling, 25-23, 14-25, 25-19, 19-25, 15-13 victory in Turners Falls.
“We put that behind us,” Turners coach Kelly Liimatainen said of the early-season loss. “We didn’t give any thought to losing to them 3-0. We never talked about losing. We just prepared to play this match.”
The victory sends Turners to Wednesday night’s WMass semifinals where it meets top-seeded Frontier at 6:30 at Pioneer Valley Regional School in Northfield. It marks a rematch of last season’s semifinal for both teams, and once again Turners will have to put a loss behind them as Frontier eliminated the Thunder from the tournament last fall in straight sets.
Monday night’s game was back and forth as the teams swapped victories.
“When we were up, we had some great momentum, but when we were losing the gym was dead silent,” Liimatainen said. “We took a timeout at one point and talked about fighting and seizing momentum and the girls stepped up and did it together.”
Liimatainen said that the biggest issue facing her team was receiving serves, which aided in the Millionaires’ two wins. Lenox even jumped out to an early lead in the fifth set but some big plays helped Turners seize momentum and carried the team to the win.
Taylor Murphy had a big night in the win with six kills, four blocks, five aces and four digs. Dabney Rollins tied for the team lead in kills with nine to go along with four aces and two blocks, and Hailey Bogusz also had nine kills to go with four digs and two aces. Sarah Waldron added four kills, one ace and five digs, and Mercedes Morales had 17 assists, three kills, five digs and one ace. Kenzie Martel also had a big night on defense.
Mt. Greylock 3, Mahar 0 — Jordyn Berry had four kills, two aces and a blocked shot on Monday but Mahar had its season come to an end with a 25-9, 25-16, 25-19 loss to third-seeded Mt. Greylock in quarterfinal action in Williamstown.
Aria Flematti finished with eight assists, one kill and one dig for the sixth-seeded Senators (16-6), and Ava Santana finished with two kills, one ace and one dig. Quincey Drew finished with two kills, and three digs, Carissa Johnson and Lauren Henne each had three digs, and Hailee Meeker had two kills.