Broncos cruise past Tigers
Burrillville aiming to move beyond semifinals in 2019
BURRILLVILLE — From 2009 to 2011, a Blackstone Valley girls volleyball team made the trip down to URI’s Keaney Gymnasium to play in the Division II title match.
But, after Mount St. Charles and Cumberland moved up to Division I, the Blackstone Valley was shut out of the D-II title match for six consecutive seasons. The dry spell came to an end last season when Lincoln came one set short of winning the program’s first D-II title.
Now, Burrillville is hoping to follow in the Lions’ footsteps. A season after falling to Lincoln in the semifinals, the Broncos bring back a talented squad, led by outside hitter Karlee Cournoyer, right-side hitter Alyssa Simpson and setter Sam Gosselin.
Through the first the Broncos appear ers.
After surviving a five-set battle with fellow semifinalist Classical to open the season, the Broncos dominated a pair of overmatched opponents. The Broncos swept Scituate last week and Tuesday night they put away Tolman 25-11, 25-4, 2512 at the Broncodome thanks to 13 aces from Paige McCreight and six aces from Cournoyer.
“The girls are all great players and they play well together,” Burrillville coach Heather Farrell said. “They know how to play the game really well. I expect this group to do just as well as they did last year and maybe even take another step. We have a lot of diversity on our offense with our two outside hitters and a lefty. We practice our offense a lot.”
Burrillville (3-0 Division II) already had a dangerous offense going into the season, but the Broncos received a boost when McCreight transferred from Mount St. Charles. The junior middle hitter was a starter for Mounties last season and she slid right into one of the two vacant starting spots this season. Kaitlynne MacPherson also provides size in the middle.
“She’s a great asset to the team and she’s a great girl,” Farrell said. “She is very well coached and she’s blended right in with the team. She’s really helped out along with Kaitlynne. She’s also stepped up. She worked in the offseason and has played really well.”
Tolman (0-3 Division II) reached the D-II quarterfinals last season, but second-year coach Michael Haggerty is dealing with a completely new team after the graduation of a number of girls who helped the school’s basketball team win the D-III title.
Haggerty said he’s starting three girls with no previous volleyball experience, so experienced players like senior Liscaury Ceballo, setter Ashley Bayona and liberto Genesis Aleman need to guide the team in the right direction.
“Those girls didn’t play a lot last year, but they’re stepping into a leadership role. With that comes a three matches, to be contendlot of adjustments,” Haggerty said. “We’ve gotten better every game, so as the year goes on we’re going to improve. This is a transition year for the program, so when you’re bringing in new girls at the varsity level, you’re going to have problems with your cohesiveness.
“At the beginning of the year our passing was really poor, and I feel like that’s come a long way. Now, we just have to develop chemistry with our setter and our hitters.”
The Tigers actually played the better volleyball through the first few points, grabbing leads of 2-0 and 3-2, but it quickly became clear which team has its sights set on playing in the Murray Center in November and which team is going through growing pains. Burrillville went on a 10-0 run with McCreight at the service line to take a commanding 12-3 advantage.
The Tigers won seven of the next 15 points thanks to the play of Aleman in the back row, but the Broncos scored the game’s final five points to end the set. Katelyn Paine, who had five kills, was a force throughout the set.
“We just have to trust each other a little more,” Haggerty said. “That will come as we play together more. We’ll stop stepping in front of each other. We’re trying to change everything with our upper body instead of our lower body.”
Aleman delivered an ace to tie the second set at two, but that was as good as it would get for the visitors. Burrillville scored 23 of the next 25 points to easily claim the second set. Cournoyer produced five of her six aces to put the set away.
The Tigers were only down 7-6 in the third set when their serve-receive problems allowed the Broncos to go on another long scoring run. The Broncos went on a 9-1 run to polish off their second straight sweep.
“Our big thing right now is making sure we run our plays right and we go through them,” Farrell said. “We need to have those players ready for the postseason. We played Classical already and they were very good. Portsmouth is going to be a challenge because they have a good coach and they play system ball. Chariho will also be tough.”
Twit