Carroll rallies to win another Catholic League title
ASTON » Four times Cardinal O’Hara had a chance to end Archbishop Carroll’s reign as Catholic League volleyball champions in the fourth set Sunday night, and each time the Patriots showed their championship mettle.
Carroll withstood that challenge and came back to take the fourth set, then went on to complete a comeback from a two-set deficit to win its fourth consecutive league title with a thrilling 3-2 triumph over the Lions at Neumann’s Mirenda Center.
Junior outside hitter/defensive specialist Meghan McCann put home the winning point, just as she had in Carroll’s four-set win over Archbishop Wood in the semifinals four days earlier, to complete an improbable 12-25, 19-25, 2516, 31-29, 15-8 come-frombehind victory.
“I think we realized that was our do-or-die moment and we just kept pushing through every match point that they had because we wanted it more,” said senior setter Leah O’Brien, who set the offense in motion with 37 assists.
It was Carroll’s poise that helped the Patriots (18-5) rally from a slow start in which nothing was right. Their passing was off, as was their hitting and servereceive game. Carroll had four serving errors, four hitting errors and two receiving errors in the first set alone.
Everything went O’Hara’s way in the first two sets, largely behind the play of senior Lauren Garvey (20 kills, 14 digs), sophomore Bridget McGuinn
(16 kills), Reagan Hickey
(12 kills, 14 digs) and Emily Collins (34 digs). The Lions scored the first three points and never looked back in the first set and rode a 9-2 run to break the second set open.
And then the momentum changed.
“I don’t know what happened,” Garvey said. “Everybody was up and probably thought it was in our hands and we were going to win. We just couldn’t grab it, I guess.”
It wasn’t until the Patriots got their serve-receive game working that everything else fell into place.
“Serve-receive is the most critical part of the game,” McCann said. “Once we started moving our feet that allowed us to put the balls up to get a good hit.”
With the serve-receive problems rectified, Carroll’s passes were more on point and their swings were more aggressive. And with each point, Carroll’s confidence grew.
The comeback began in the third set after head coach Brian McCann called a timeout with Carroll down, 6-3. The Patriots scored 11 of the next 14 points to erase that deficit and break the set open.
“It was definitely the energy,” said senior All-Delco Paige Monastero, who was just named league MVP for the second year in a row and was on all four championship teams. “Once our energy came up, that’s when you saw the points come back up.”
Still, the Lions had chances to take the title in the fourth set. Each time, though, the Patriots were equal to the challenge. McCann, who had 15 digs in the final two sets alone, found an open spot to tie the match, 25-25, and keep the Patriots alive. With O’Hara holding a 27-26 lead, Monastero (29 kills) put home a dink to tie the match again, 27-27. After a service error put O’Hara back on top, 28-27, Monastero came through with another big set-tying swing. McGuinn put the Lions back up, 29-28, but Monastero was there to even the match again. The Patriots finally took the set on a receiving error by the Lions followed by a hitting error.
“Today, Paige proved why she’s the two-time Catholic League MVP,”
O’Hara coach Bill Collins said. “She’s one of the special players in the history of this league, but we didn’t execute what we practiced for the past couple of days at all. We had a certain game plan that we wanted to do and we got away from it, especially in crunch time and we panicked. There’s no two ways about it. And they’re really, really good. I’m not taking away from anything they did. They did what they needed to do. They put balls on the floor. They were tall on the block and we just couldn’t recover and in the fifth set we just panicked.”
Carroll took advantage of that fear. Monastero had two more kills as the Patriots scored the first four points of the fifth set. The Lions came back to get within 7-6, only to have Carroll respond by scoring the next six points to ice the match.
“I think we had the idea in our mind that we won the last three in a row and this was going to be easy,” O’Brien said. “Obviously, that wasn’t the case. After those first two sets we realized we had to fight if we wanted this and we did want it so we started to fight and that turned it around for us.”
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NOTES » Both Carroll and O’Hara will play for District
12 titles in a tripleheader Friday at Bonner-Prendergast. Carroll will play an as yet undetermined foe in the Class 4A championship game at 4 p.m. The Lions will play in the Class 3A final at 5:30 against an opponent to be determined. O’Hara automatically qualified for the PIAA tournament because the top two teams from District 12 advance. Carroll must win the District 12 title to qualify.