West Warwick too much for Burrillville
Broncos claim third game in loss
WEST WARWICK — Facing a 2-0 deficit and a long bus ride home from West Warwick, the Burrillville girls volleyball team was presented with a pair of options on Thursday night.
The Broncos could either pack it in, conserve their energy and hope for a better result in their next match or they could dig down deep and see where it would get them.
They chose the latter and wound up being the better for it despite ultimately falling short by a 3-1 score (25-18, 2511, 25-27, 25-18) to a talented Wizards squad.
“They dug down deep and tried to come out with a win,’ head coach Heather Farrell said, crediting her team for battling the whole way through.
A 25-18 loss in Game 1 suggested that a close match was in store for both teams, but the Wizards dominated Game
2, blowing the Broncos away, 25-11 to quickly seize control and appear on the verge of a routine 3-0 sweep.
Instead, Burrillville recomposed themselves and, thanks in large part to the play of Katelyn Pane (12 kills, six blocks) and Paige McCreight (11 kills) were able work their way back into the match with a dramatic 27-25 win that saw them successfully stave off two match points.
Their momentum continued into the early stages of the fourth before the home team regained control, using an 11-3 run to take an 1810 lead, which proved to be enough to secure an eventual victory.
Burrillville, now 3-2 following Thursday’s loss been inconsistent with their results, but not the effort they give each night.
“We’ve had our ups and downs,” said Farrell. “They fight right to the end and we just need to fix a lot our little mistakes.”
Part of that inconsistency stems as a result from the team’s overall youth. Only four seniors are on this year’s roster compared to eight freshmen.
“We have a lot of new players on our team,” Farrell said. “We graduated a lot of our team from last year, so I think it’s just getting through those nerves and that pressure with the new players. Once they get a hold of that, they will be fine.”
The Broncos will return to action next Tuesday when they play host to Lincoln with only three regular season matches remaining after that.
For the Wizards, Thursday’s win did more than just improve the club’s record to 4-1; it resulted in their head coach Josh Malloy giving them their highest praise yet.
“I want to say this was easily our best start to a game,” he said with his team jumping all over the opposition early on.
That had not been the case as of late.
“We had been struggling,” Malloy said. “Our last three matches, we came out 0-2 to start before coming back in a couple of them and dropping one of them. We’ve had a really good week in practice and it really finally translated into gameplay tonight. We came out from the get-go with a lot of energy and a lot of aggressive play.”
Junior Mae D’Ambra continued her dominant play on Thursday, leading the Wizards with 18 kills and four aces, while sophomore Abby Camara contributed 12 kills of her own in the winning effort.
On the defensive end, Brea Alves posted 21 digs for West Warwick, while D’Ambra had 15 and Aliyah Naseer and Kalen Greenhalgh, 13 apiece.
“I feel like we played better than we have recently and it was really encouraging to see some of the things that were going wrong in the last few games start to turn around. I think it really started with this week’s practice,” Malloy reiterated, praising the opposition as well.