Taconic Pulls Out Five-Setter at Mount Greylock in Stunning Fashion
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – On its social media account after a five-set win at Mount Greylock, the Taconic volleyball team Wednesday called its victory the “greatest comeback of the year.”
They may have undersold it.
This was a comeback for the ages.
The Thunder lost the fourth set, 25-6, and fell behind in the fifth set, 11-1, before rallying for a 25-23, 24-26, 29-27, 6-25, 20-18 win over the three-time defending Western Massachusetts Champions.
Gracie Cormier delivered 11 kills, Sophie Aubin pulled up 15 digs, Ella Stodden passed out 27 assists, and Angelese Ward-Greene had seven blocks and seven kills as Taconic won for the third time in four outings and avenged a three-set loss to the Mounties in its season-opener.
“It’s amazing, because we haven’t won against Mount Greylock in years,” Aubin said. “And even at Taconic [on Sept. 3], we didn’t win, and it was a hard game. So it was just amazing that we got to win, and we played all five sets amazingly.”
Set No. 4 is not likely to figure prominently on Taconic’s year-end highlight reel.
A 10-point run on the serve of Mount Greylock’s Olivia Perez opened up a 17-3 lead for the hosts, who went on to take the set by 19 points after the teams traded two-point victories in the first three sets.
Three aces by the Mounties’ Anna Garnish toward the end of the fourth set started a 5-2 Mount Greylock run to end the set. It then followed that up with nine straight points on Kaleigh Jaros’ serve to start the fifth set.
In that 14-2 span, Taconic failed to return serve seven times.
“In the fourth set, we lost a little bit of our energy,” Stodden said. “We may have gotten too cocky, some might say. In the fifth set, we really had to hammer down and focus. That was the most important thing.
“The fourth set, we had to ignore. We just had to let that go behind us.”
Taconic coach Lance Fyfe said after the slow start to the fourth set, he wanted to conserve energy for the tie-breaker.
“I’m not exactly sure how we fell into that funk, but, when it happened, I think it was mental really,” Fyfe said. “I actually felt pretty confident that we would come back and win in the fifth, so I took my starters out to give them a break.
“When we came out so slow to start that fifth set, oh man. I started questioning myself. Should I not have taken the starters out? Because now things are not clicking the way they should. … I had to burn up both of my timeouts early, and, thank God, they didn’t give up. I did everything I could to build their confidence in the timeout. It was really nothing I needed to correct in the timeout as far as the way they were playing.
“I think it was just mental.”
Aliyah DelSonno got a tip at the net to give Taconic its first point and a sideout, down 9-1.
A couple of points later, Ward-Green’s block gave the Thunder the serve down 11-2.
DelSonno went to the line and served the next five points – the last two on aces – to give Taconic hope – and a more manageable four-point deficit.
After a pair of side outs, Aubin got two aces in a three-point run to get Taconic within one point at 12-11.
Mount Greylock settled down and won the next two points to earn its first match point at 14-11.
But Gracelyn Cormier put away a kill to keep Taconic alive, and Lexi Murphy Malloy served the next four points, closing with an ace to give the Thunder a match point at 15-14.
From there, the teams battled back and fourth, extending the first-to-15 set until Aurora Rose DiMarco’s kill tied the set at 18-18 and gave the Thunder a side out.
Ward-Green put away the next point to give Taconic its third match point and did the honors one more time, putting back a return from the Mounties to end the final rally and the night.
“We mostly just talked it over,” Aubin said of the key to Taconic’s ability to pull out of a late-match tailspin. “We communicated. And we got all our energy together. Instead of using it off the court and stuff, we brought it back onto the court and communicated more and more on the court.”
Olivia Perez had a triple double for Mount Greylock (3-3), putting away 13 kills, serving 11 aces and passing out 11 assists. Kaleigh Jaros led the Mounties with 14 assists while serving eight aces, and Jillian DeChaine had seven kills.
Mount Greylock coach Greg Geyer said his side, which was playing without its only senior, will learn from Wednesday’s disappointment.
“We’re a new team, and we need to get the experience,” Geyer said. “I’m really proud of our team and how they’re developing.
“I think it’s a great lesson for them. We talk a lot about playing every point. And when it came down to being tied, we’re playing every point. We just need to gain experience. There were opportunities we could have been more aggressive. But we need to stay in each point and not think about anything – whether we’re up or down or anything like that.”
Mount Greylock will look to break a two-game skid on Friday when it hosts Ludlow.
Taconic (3-4) is at Baystate Charter on Friday. Win or lose, the odds are against a win quite like Wednesday’s any time soon.
“Very rarely, especially when you’re going to 15,” Fyfe said of the 10-point comeback. “Maybe to 25, but to 15, I feel like, ‘Man.’
“But I kept trying to tell them: They put up these big runs against us, but we were up, 2-1 [in the match], so we’re just as good as they are. We can also put in big runs like that. A lot of it is just confidence. It’s what’s going on in their heads. Because these guys can play.”