Wahconah Hands Mount Greylock First Loss in Five-Set Comeback
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- A four-point run on the serve of freshman Sasha Fyfe Friday fueled a five-set win for the Wahconah volleyball team.
Fyfe took the ball with her team ahead, 1-0, and four points later, a kill by Kassidy Krejmas gave Wahconah a 5-0 lead it never relinquished.
Krejmas finished with 14 kills, and Kaylee O’Bryan had 23 assists in a 25-20, 21-25, 9-25, 25-20, 15-6 win that knocked Mount Greylock (8-1) from the ranks of the unbeaten and gave Wahconah its sixth straight win and a 6-2 record.
After two back-and-forth sets, the Mounties appeared to take control of the match with a third-set blowout fueled by a nine-point run on eighth-grader Charlotte Coody’s serve.
But Wahconah refocused and forced the decisive fifth set thanks to some key kills by Breanna Robert and O’Bryan.
“We just took a deep breath, we regrouped,” O’Bryan said. “We went back to our game plan like we played against Lee [on Monday] and played our game. We came back.
“It was amazing.”
McKenzie LaBier had seven kills. O’Bryan and Fyfe each recorded 12 digs.
It was a Krejmas kill late in the first set that gave Wahconah the lead for good and a sideout at 20-19. Fyfe served one point to give her team a two-point cushion before losing the serve.
Another kill by Krejmas got Wahconah the ball up, 22-20, and Breanna Robert served out the set, finishing things with an ace.
Mount Greylock bounced back in the second, taking a 7-2 lead with four straight points on Emma Hayward’s serve and never leading by fewer than two points the rest of the way.
Wahconah got within 19-17 on an ace by Karley Bazonski, but after a sideout for the Mounties, Takiera Darrow served three straight points. A Wahconah service error gave Mount Greylock set point at 24-18, and the visitors fended off three set points before another service error evened the match at 1-1.
Hayward and Darrow led Mount Greylock with nine digs apiece.
“I was incredibly proud of our defense,” Mount Greylock coach Greg Geyer said. “Our defense picked up stuff that was amazing. It was a much closer match than that fifth set.”
Celina Savage had four of Mount Greylock’s 13 blocks.
Coody had 27 assists to go with six aces. Savage, Darrow and another eighth-grader, Madison MacHaffie, each had seven kills.
Coody had three aces in her big service run early in the third, which saw Mount Greylock go ahead, 11-1.
Savage had two kills in that run, but moments later, she appeared to roll an ankle in a collision with a teammate at 11-3 and was not able to return to the floor.
“This is an incredibly close team,” Geyer said. “Emotionally, it’s hard, especially as the match goes on.
“The other thing that’s hard is the matchups. We wanted to match up with Kassidy [Krejmas], and the play together in the off-season, so I know Kassidy really well. She had a great match. We wanted to match up with her, but the matchups changed [with the injury]. That made a big difference.”
Mount Greylock pushed its lead to double digits for good with three straight points on the serve of Alyssa Phelps to get to 18-5, and the Mounties never looked back.
Wahconah, meanwhile, was able to look past that disappointing third set.
“We stopped going with our game plan that we had for this game -- the spots we wanted to hit, the way that we wanted to pass and stuff like that,” Wahconah coach Dave Lussier said of the third set. “We kind of got caught in the emotion of the game. They’re an awesome team, they’re a great defensive team. You have to have patience with them digging so many balls and know you’re going to outlast them.
“We started making some errors in the middle of the match there, some crucial ones. And a lot of times, it was just bad timing. Coming into the fourth set, we kind of settled down a little bit, went back to the game plan and gained some confidence.”
Mount Greylock’s Phelps notched three of her six aces late in the fourth set in a four-point run that gave the hosts an 18-16 lead.
But Olivia Wehner got a couple of points back for Wahconah on her serve, and Fyfe served three straight to gave their team a 23-19 lead.
Mount Greylock earned a sideout on a kill by Coody but gave the ball back with a service error that gave Wahconah set point, and it closed the deal at 25-20 to earn a fifth set.
Wahconah maintained the early lead it got on Fyfe’s serve all the way to 11-6. That’s when Wehner went to the back line and served out the match, which ended when the Mounties were called for a net violation.
It was a very different match from the first time the two sides met, a three-set win for Mount Greylock back in March.
“I think the first time we played them, it was our first game, and we have such a young team that everybody was unsure of their position and their job on the team,” O’Bryan said. “Now, we know what we’re doing. We have a core group. And we work really well together.”