Lenox Outlasts Wahconah in Five Sets
DALTON, Mass. – For the second time in two weeks, the Lenox volleyball team has won matches on back-to-back nights.
This week, those wins came against two of the top programs in Western Massachusetts.
Emily Barenski pulled up 20 digs, and Grace Julieano passed out 20 assists Thursday as Lenox knocked off Wahconah in five sets.
The win over the 2024 Western Mass Class B Champions came 24 hours after Lenox beat the 2024 champs in Class C, Mount Greylock and gave Lenox a 6-0 record just 10 days into the season.
The Millionaires’ Sara Isby had a team-high 10 kills, including a key fifth-set kill to stop a five-point Wahconah run and give Lenox its first match point.
Barenski had a big all-around night with seven assists and six aces to go with her digs.
“It means a lot,” Barenski said of the victory. “We just came off a big win yesterday against Greylock, so we had to keep the momentum up. It meant a lot.
“We won against Wahconah last year. We did it again.”
The five-set win over Wahconah a year ago in Lenox came right in the middle of a 19-match winning streak that sent the Millionaires to the Western Mass Class C finals.
This year’s playoffs are a long ways off, but Lenox came out firing on all cylinders in the first of two meetings this fall against Wahconah.
Early runs on the serves of Barenski and Claire O’Brien (nine aces, five kills, four digs) opened up a five-point lead in the first set, and Barenski served a couple of aces in her second time at the service line to push the margin to seven at 17-10.
A push by Evelyn Julieano (seven kills, six digs) secured an eight-point Lenox win and was indicative of the kind of attack Wahconah would face all night.
“We’ve been trying to make it so they don’t swing at everything,” Lenox coach Anna Nealon said. “We want them to do different things: tipping, pushing, hitting line, hitting cross – just throwing different things into play. And it’s been working so well.”
Wahconah’s attack got on track in the second set.
With Taea Cunagin (team-high 14 kills) leading the way, the hosts earned a seven-point win of their own to level the match at a set apiece.
Cunagin and Emma Jacinto (12 kills) kept the pressure on all night off setter Melaina Haczela (31 assists).
“We really just had to stay with our lineup,” Barenski said of Lenox’s response defensively. “We have some really good defenders. We know they have really good hitters. We kind of read where they were going after a long time, and we were able to pick it up. We were able to get some really good digs out of it.”
After a push by Evelyn Julieano to start the third set, Lenox led from wire-to-wire. The lead got to 11 points on a kill by O’Brien at 22-11 before Wahconah cut into the margin with a three-point run on Cunagin’s serve. But the Millionaires took the set and a 2-1 lead with a 25-16 score.
Again, Wahconah answered.
It fell behind early in the fourth set by rallied with four points on Haczela’s serve to take an 8-7 lead. It stayed a one-or two-point margin until Wahconah got back-to-back kills by Jacinto to go up, 13-11.
Wahconah then got some breathing room when Jacinto served four straight points to give her team a 21-13 lead with her only ace of the night. Another ace by Cunagin ended the set, a 25-18 Wahconah win to get to the fifth set.
That set turned on O’Brien’s serve midway through.
She went to the line with Lenox up, 6-4, and served an ace to start a seven-point run. Her second ace of the run skipped off the net and dropped to give the Millionaires a commanding 13-4 lead in the first-to-15 sprint.
Wahconah’s Cunagin delivered a kill for a sideout and then served four straight points to keep her team alive.
“I think the crowd got into it a little bit,” Wahconah coach Dave Lussier said. “They cleaned up some of the mistakes we were kind of making and started playing with confidence and just changed the whole thing.
“And if we had a few more rallies in there, maybe we could have clawed back into that fifth one.”
Instead, Isby’s kill snapped Cunagin’s run with Lenox ahead, 14-9.
After a service error by the Lenox gave the serve back at 14-10, a Wahconah pass hit the ceiling and dropped on its side of the net to give the Millionaires the point and the match.
Lenox’s Nealon said her team was able to ride the momentum of its first win over Mount Greylock in recent memory into the road match.
“I think they just took what happened last night, how they played and the excitement of beating Greylock after, I think it was seven years, and they really took exactly how they played yesterday and put it right back in today,” she said. “They didn’t take too long to celebrate. They just got right back into it. They didn’t dwell on it.
“They just literally put so much work and time into this.”
Lenox has spent a lot of time in matches to start the season. The Millionaires have played six of their 16 regular-season matches with five weeks left to go in the campaign. Nealon admitted she was a little worried that fatigue might catch up to her team going into Thursday night.
“We haven’t really been able to have a practice in a very long time,” she said. “So having game after game after game – it’s very tough. But I think, after this week, we’ll be able to chill out a little bit and have some practices, hopefully.”
Lenox (6-0) is home on Monday to face Lee.
Wahconah (4-1) hosts Mount Greylock on Monday.