The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
Cortland eliminates Oneida from postseason
Purple Tigers win in five games to advance
ONEIDA>> Though her team-entered Friday night’s Section III Class A quarterfinal match as the No. 3 seed, Oneida girls volleyball coach Cyndi Bobo knew not to take No. 6 Cortland lightly.
The Purple Tigers showed why.
Cortland rebounded from losses in the second and fourth games to edge Oneida 25-17, 18-25, 25-22, 7-25, 25-23 in five sets and earn a rematch with Chittenango in the semifinals.
“Let’s talk about the obvious,” Bobo said. “We’re disappointed. We’ve worked very hard this season. There’s a lot of things we have been working on that we did really well but there was just a lot of inconsistencies with our play.”
Cortland put her squad in an early hole, taking a quick 3-1 lead on a pair of hitting errors by the hosts. Oneida would twice pull to within one point on kills by Sarah Pickard but the Purple Tigers countered with a pair of 4-0 runs to make it a 22-14 game. Bobo’s squad was able to trim that lead to six points before Ali Bustamante tallied a kill to set up the game point. The senior followed with an ace just inside the line to seal the 2517 victory.
Oneida rebounded in the next game. After trailing by as many as five points, Bobo’s squad rallied, taking an 18-12
lead behind an ace by Jenna Relyea and two straight kills by Matteson Mair. Then it was Cortland’s turn to come back. Bustamante tallied back-to-back kills of her own to cut Oneida’s lead to 21-18.
The Purple Tigers wouldn’t get any closer. Bobo’s squad took advantage of a series of Cortland mishits to take the second game 25-18 and tie the match at 1-1.
The next game was much closer. After Cortland tied the score at 2121 on an ace by Caitlyn Ruggiero, Oneida hit the ball out of bounds to give the Purple Tigers a 23-21 lead. Mair had a kill to cut that deficit to one point but Bustamante followed with a block to clinch the 25-22 win and a 2-1 advantage in the match.
But Bobo’s squad wasn’t done just yet. After tallying a pair of kills to lead Oneida to five unanswered points, Mair added another to spark her team’s longest scoring run of the night and make it a 17-3 game.
Pickard recorded three more kil ls to further stretch that advantage to 16 points and the hosts easily took the game 25-7.
“To keep the intensity that we brought to the fourth game,” Bobo said of her words to her team. “That it’s not always easy to carry that over once there’s a little lull so that they needed to keep the intensity and the communication going.”
Her team would get off to a strong start in the deciding fifth set, jumping out to an 11-8 lead behind kills by Pickard and Ally Simons. But Cortland would make one final comeback, tying the score at 20-20 after an ace by Sam Daniels. The Purple Tigers tied the game two more times from there before Bustamante tallied one final kill to seal the 3-2 victory.
“I’m so pleased with this season,” Bobo said. “I graduated quite a few starters last year and it’s a very young group so I’m basically getting my whole team back next year which is nice. It’s something to look forward to.”