Shen rallies to beat BH-BL
By Stan Hudy BURNT HILLS, N.Y. » The Shenendehowa girls varsity volleyball team made a few adjustments after losing the opening set to Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake Wednesday night to reel off three straight set victories to take the battle of previously unbeaten and ranked top five teams.
In front of one of the largest crowds this season at a girls volleyball match in the Suburban Council the Spartans (13-1) captured the opening stanza, 27-25, before the Plainsmen (14-0) took the next three 25-22, 25-18 and 25-14.
“The first set they played well, they didn’t do their best volleyball, but they did make the changes we talked about, just maintaining control,” Shenendehowa Coach Lori Kessler said. “I thought that they started to pass the ball really well off the serve receive; we were then able to execute our offense a little bit more.
“We made some adjustments without defense that seemed to work out. I felt overall they made the corrections quickly, they adjusted and we able to capitalize from those adjustments.”
Shenendehowa was able to find answers to the Burnt Hills servers and put them in the hole, down 13-6 in the second set, jump out to a 9-0 lead in the third and 5-0 and still withstand a Spartan rally to tie it at five apiece before taking control once again.
“We had a chance in the second we didn’t take advantage of that,” Burnt Hills Coach Gary Bynon said. “It’s kind of been our deal all year. We cannot sustain between games and go out, we did this earlier in the year too, done it in a couple of tournaments we get behind and we show resiliency, we battle back.”
Bynon also pointed out that the Spartans didn’t help themselves out throughout the contest.
“We cannot hit .158, that’s like a batting average in baseball; we cannot hit .158 and beat good teams,” Bynon said. “We’ve been hitting .320 all year as a team and we come in today and hit .158. But we passed better; we did a lot of things better than we have all year.
“I thought there were two very good serving teams; they served better than we did. When we got a pass we made bad decisions. It was that all night.”
When the Spartans did make solid contact on the litany of long points on the night they were often greeted by senior middle blocker Nicole Adams who recorded nine blocks and 23 kills along with outside hitter Mary Talty who had 14 kills, junior Maddy Frutchey with nine more kills and sophomore Annie Sla with eight kills.
“Coach said that we need to get our servicing passes up because once we were getting perfect passes right to the setter we were able to bang them right down,” Adams said. “Once our offense is going, we really had flow in the game and I feel that was like the beginning spark because once we got our offense going they weren’t able to return our balls as quickly as before.”
Behind the front line libero Charlotte Macken and her defense was giving the Burnt Hills gymnasium a good buffing, diving time and time again, coming up with big digs to keep volleys alive, points alive and making each team work for the next point.
“The little points matter,” Macken said. “We just had to give everything out on the court and if we didn’t do those little points, then the game could have been completely different, which is a big deal.”
With each dig it extended the set and forced both teams to regroup and set up its offense.
“It’s physically exhausting and even mentally exhausting to think that hard and to be able to play not only physically, but then once you are physically exhausted to play mentally and strategically and picking spots,” Adams said. “I feel that’s what we’re so good at at this point. We condition every day and we’re ready for these matches because we love to play in these matches against competitive teams like Burnt Hills.”
The battle of two teams ranked No. 3 in New York State in Class AA and A brought out a raucous, capacity crowd for the girls.
“I think it’s great for girls volleyball in general, but I also feel like it gives our JV and our varsity players an opportunity to thrive in an atmosphere like this,” Kessler said. “I think they do. I think they long for it because we don’t get it and they get fired up to play in an atmosphere like this.”
The outright Suburban Council title is out of the Spartans grasp, so they now have to focus on a chance at a divisional title.
“I can’t take away from how hard our kids played and we talked about that and this is the hardest they’ve played and in many cases it’s the best they’ve played, but they can play better and we need to,” Bynon said. “We have a tie for the divisional championship, but we have to win on Friday at Columbia, a very good Columbia team coming off tonight to win the division outright. That’s the most important thing to me. It’s a great atmosphere, the fans were great, it’s great for volleyball, but bottom line we’re playing to win championships and we have a big match on Friday.”