Burnt Hills tops Bethlehem 3- 1
Spartans rally for Suburban Council win over Eagles
ALBANY, N. Y. » With Bethlehem down by 10 points, just eight Burnt Hills points away from a loss, BC’s Caleb Federman told all of his teammates that the match wasn’t over.
At the time, he was right, even though it was nearing its inevitable end.
Bethlehem had a one- set lead, then had four- point leads in each of the next two sets. But they couldn’t close out either, and then Burnt Hills pulled away in the fourth, as the Spartans took a crucial matchup between two of the three competitive programs in the Suburban Council. The final score was 22- 25, 25- 23, 25- 18, 25- 14.
“If you get in that situation many times, you can just get down and on your heels and not push yourselves,” Burnt Hills head coach Paul Sander said. “And they were able to, I think a characteristic of the team is they go to push each other. I was proud of how they were able to come back after being down.”
Brad Albright had 18 kills to lead the Spartans, Jake Baker had 14 kills and Zac Cabral had 12. Derek Haughey led the team with 15 service points.
Bethlehem had lost to Burnt Hills earlier in the season. Whenever they match up, or face Shenendehowa, there’s a little more of a competitive edge, with those three schools representing the steepest competition.
After getting a one- set lead and a 21- 18 lead in the second set, it seemed as though the Eagles were well- positioned, but struggled to close the rest of the evening.
“It’s always great to have competition in Section II,” Albright said. “In the past, this was sort of the one time when we really got to prove ourselves because Bethlehem was inarguably the best team in the league.
“I’m incredibly proud of the way we didn’t take the first set loss as a defeat. We took it as something to build upon. As soon as we started to gain momentum, we started to roll with it.”
Bethlehem was finishing off the long points better early on. They had one epic rally that ended in an Arlo Marynczak kill that had everyone on the bench get up and all of the teammates personally coming to celebrate with him. By the latter stages of the match, Burnt Hills was winning points in bunches and had really taken Bethlehem out of the game.
The Spartans point the exclamation point on the win when Cabral rose high above the net for a ferocious kill facing mostly Bethlehem subs just two points away from a win.
Bethlhem had a chance to win, but didn’t have enough in the tank to get over the edge.
“We’ve still got to learn how to close,” Bethlhem head coach James O’Keefe said. “We’ve got to learn how to finish matches. I think we took a big step tonight in showing everybody that we’re for real and we’re going to continue to be one of the better teams out here. We’re going to work hard and we’re going to learn how to finish these matches.”