Mounties starting strong
Mount boys volleyballers sweep La Salle Academy
PROVIDENCE — The match had long been decided, but the point was emblematic of why the Mount St. Charles volleyball team had such an easy time defeating state runner-up La Salle in three sets Tuesday night.
With the Mounties needing just six more points to claim the Division I sweep, the Rams thought they had the point won when senior Jack Hogan ripped a right-side attack ticketed for the floor. The Mounties kept the point alive and then repelled another La Salle attack before the Rams committed a hitting error.
While senior All-State outside hitter Jarod Tessier was the dominant player in the match with a match-high 14 kills, it was Mount’s defensive work which proved to be the difference. Junior All-State libero Dan Gould had eight digs and five assists, while fellow All-Stater Brett Gould had 29 assists in a 25-15, 25-12, 25-16 Division I road victory.
“I think our ball control, overall, this early in the season is pretty good,” Mount coach Josh D’Abate said after his squad swept the Rams for the second straight season in Providence.
“It helps us in games like this because they had some guys who were swinging. It helps when you have Danny back there and Jared back there along with Tom (Cahaly) and Brett. It’s not always going to be a perfect up, but it’s definitely going to be a ball that we can play. We’ve done a good job converting that into something we can take a swing at.”
The brothers Gould and Tessier are clearly going to be on every team’s scouting report this season, but the Mounties showed a diversified attack against a La Salle team that had plenty of athletic front-row players. Cahaly delivered eight kills, Brett Gould had four from the setter position, while Greg Lynch chipped in with three kills and a match-high five blocks. Mike DelliCarpini also had four blocks.
Mount St. Charles (1-0 Division I) likely has Saturday’s road match against 2013 and 2015 state champion Coventry, but first the Mounties face rebuilding Exeter-West Greenwich Thursday night in the reigning INorth champions’ home opener.
“We showed some flashes of really good play,” D’Abate said. “I was really happy – and I told the guys this after the match – the first 15 points we played at a level I know we can play at it. We played really well, passed well, executed and celebrated as a team. We sort of fell off and that’s something we have to do a better of because we need to play well from start to finish.”
La Salle (0-1 Division I), which upset Coventry in last season’s semifinals before losing to South Kingstown in the title game, has to find a way to replace All-State hitter Cal Butler. At the moment, the Rams appear to have talented hitters in Hogan and fellow middle Robert Casey, the problem appears to be staying in system.
The Mounties scored seven of the match’s first eight points, and while the visitors had a few kills early in the match, the Rams were often the architects of their own downfall. The Rams did close the gap to 10-6 after a Casey kill, but the Mounties slowly pulled away to secure the set.
Mount was simply dominant in the second set and a lot of its success had to do with the play of Tessier. The senior finished the night with a .440 hitting percentage (14 kills and three errors on 25 attacks). The Mounties opened up leads of 3-0, 9-4 and 16-10 before the Rams were forced to call a timeout.
Paul Brodeur went to the service line with his team up 16-11 and he proceeded to use a vicious jump-float serve to stretch the lead out to 12, as the Mounties secured a 13-point win.
The Rams led for the first time all match in the third set, but they only led for three points before the Mounties stormed ahead. Mount went on a 5-0 run to turn a one-point deficit into a five-point lead. D’Abate said he was going to mix and match his formations this season and he made a change in the third set.
“We need to develop some sort of rhythm early before we can start changing up our system,” D’Abate said. “I know that sounds crazy, hut you have to get comfortable doing one thing really well before we can mix it up. In the third game, we had the same lineup, but it was different. We brought them out in a different rotation and formation. They executed really well, considering that’s the first time we made that change.”