Mount Greylock Battles for Five-Set Win to Reach Quarter-Finals

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – The South Shore Vocational volleyball team came from behind to stay in the match on Tuesday.

 

Mount Greylock fought back to win it.

 

Olivia Perez put down 20 kills as the Mounties overcame a terrible start to the third set to rally fo a 25-11, 25-18, 26-28, 23-25, 15-10 win and a berth in the Division 4 State Quarter-Finals.

 

Fifth-seeded Mount Greylock (17-3) moves on to Thursday’s Elite Eight game at No. 4 Greater Lawrence Tech (19-2), which swept Tri-County RVT in their second-round match on Tuesday evening.

 

Mount Greylock looked like it was cruising to a sweep on its end after dominant wins in the first two sets.

 

But the Vikings used a seven-point run to build a 15-3 lead in set No. 3, and even though the Mounties eventually came back to earn a match point at 26-25, South Shore Voc held on to win that set and the fourth to force the first-to-15 final set.

 

The big break there came on Anna Garnish’s serve.

 

She took the ball with the set tied 7-7 and did not give it up until the Mounties had a 12-8 lead.

 

Her five-point run featured two of her four aces and one of Caroline Callahan’s nine kills.

 

“[Garnish] has been serving super aggressively lately,” Mount Greylock coach Faith Wehner said. “She is just on it. She’s finding good spots. She’s hitting the ball really hard, and other teams are having a hard time with it.”

 

South Shore spent much of the night handling everything Mount Greylock could throw at it. For every one of Perez’ kills, there was at least one other attack from her and the Mounties’ other hitters that the Vikings somehow managed to keep from falling to the floor.

 

“Their defense was outrageous,” Wehner said of the Vikings (15-7). “They’re maybe one of the scrappiest teams we’ve ever played, and it’s hard to keep up with a scrappy team, because no matter what you do, if they’re getting the ball up, you’ve just got to keep doing stuff, you’ve got to keep changing up what you’re doing. So it was a constant evolution for our game tonight.”

 

The Mounties looked fully evolved early on.

 

A four-point run on the serve of Kaleigh Jaros (33 assists) gave the Mounties an early working margin, and it was 18-11 when Perez went to the service line and finished out the set, delivering back-to-back aces at one point.

 

The second set featured two long runs for the Mounties.

 

Hayden Derby erased an early 4-1 gap with a six-point run that saw Perez get a block and a kill to make it 7-4 before the Vikings could get a side out.

 

Later in the set, Garnish served five straight points – two delivered by Callahan and the last on an ace – to open a 16-12 lead. Perez again served out the set, this time with an ace and a kill from Kimora Melanson (six kills) to give the Mounties a 2-0 lead in the match.

 

Then came the third set, when the Vikings’ Emmalee Torrey served five points in a row to open a 7-2 lead and Avah Powers served seven straight to push the margin to 15-3.

 

Wehner said her team lost a little focus after taking the 2-0 lead.

 

“I think we have a bad habit of getting too comfortable in a game, and I think that’s exactly what happened in the start of that third set,” she said.

 

But in a sequence reminiscent of the Western Mass final, when Mount Greylock erased a 24-15 deficit in the fourth set of an eventual five-set loss, the Mounties battled back, this time with two big runs.

 

First, Cecelia Keough got a couple of kills from Perez in a six-point service run that closed the gap to 18-12. Then, with Mount Greylock staring down match point at 24-20, Sophia Cook served four straight points, the last on an ace, to tie the set.

 

The Mounties earned a match point on a kill by Keough to make it 26-25, but South Shore Voc got a a side out and ended the set two points later.

 

The visitors pulled out a back-and-forth fourth set, 25-23, to get to the winner-take-all fifth.

 

Garnish’s run gave Mount Greylock the lead it never relinquished, and Perez put down two kills in the final four points to end the night.

 

It was a night when Mount Greylock hit the floor without one of its biggest weapons, Tyanna Lepicier, who watched the match in street clothes.

 

“I think it was definitely an interesting adjustment,” Wehner said. “I think we did a good job with it. I think it was hard to get into it, and I think as the game went on, we started to be a little uncomfortable being next to some new people. But I think we overcame that and got through it.”

 

Photos from this match to come.