In fairly commanding fashion, the No. 9 seeded Greenwich High School girls volleyball team punched its ticket for the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference class LL finals with a 3-0 (25-22, 25-16, 25-18) victory over No. 3 seeded Southington High School Wednesday night at the Trumbull High gym.
“This feels so good right now,” Morgan Rafferty said. “After getting out at semis in FCIACs, we wanted this so badly. This is our year. We have been planning this since the beginning of the season. This is so amazing.”
With the victory, Big Red will see a familiar foe in the class LL championship game, which will be played in Berlin High School Saturday night at 7 p.m., as FCIAC foe Fairfield Ludlowe will be on the other side of the net.
“I’m super excited,” Samantha Schecter said. “I’ve never been to the finals for states. It’s going to be an awesome game and I am really excited to play Ludlowe.” We definitely have improved massively over the season. We’re not the oldest team. We don’t have all seniors on the court, so it’s definitely important for us to keep our defenses up and our energy up to complete a game.”
For Greenwich High head coach Steve Lapham, playing a great game defensively and getting off solid serves was a key to the team’s success.
“Our passing was good, our serving was good, we hit spots, kept [Southington] off balance and that was our goal,” Lapham said. “We knew their middles were strong, but we could make them have a few errand passes, then they couldn’t go to the middle Their only option was going to the outside. It was close, but I like the way stayed tough and played good defense.”
Leading the way for Big Red was Rafferty with her standout all-around game. She finished with six kills, three aces and 11 points on serve. Not to be outdone was Abbie Wolf, who once again dominated in front of the net, finishing with 14 kills and one assist.
“At the beginning of the season, your first goals are FCIAC and State championships,” Wolf said. “We fell short at FCIAC championships and now we know that in order to finish what we started, we need to go to the championships and win it. It’s great that we are there and hopefully it will be even better Saturday.”
Teammate Schecter netted eight kills and one dig in the winning effort.
“I think we were definitely confident going in here today,” Schecter said. “I felt like they knew what they were doing, but once we got our serving in and got Abbie going, they were a little bit terrified. Our serving and passing was great today. We were a little jittery at the beginning, but we kicked it up a lot.”
In addition to Rafferty and Wolf, Maggy Egan was stellar at assists, netting a team-high 27 and also had seven service points. She also added one ace and one kill. Nadia Sotgiu took home 10 digs, three kills and one ace, while teammate Micaela Lew added a team-high 18 digs and one ace.
Caroline Beneville pitched in with 13 points on serve, five digs, two aces and one kill.
“Michaela dug some balls and Nadia and Caroline passed,” Lapham said. “I think the three of them are some of the top passers in the state and far as receive and serve. It doesn’t go noticed out on the court, but they are the ones that keep on putting the ball right up on the net for us to attack. Without that, we are not doing anything with Abbie, Morgan or Sam.”
And in the third game, with a trip on the line, the ball came to Rafferty, who connected on the kill that Southington wasn’t able to control. (To view Greenwich picking up the last point of the class LL semifinals, click here)
“I was so excited,” Rafferty said. “Everybody wants that point and for some reason it just keeps coming to me. It was amazing. It was nice to be able to help send us to the finals.”
After a back-and-forth first set, Greenwich controlled the second set early on, building a quick 6-1 lead off an ace from Rafferty and a kill from Wolf.
“We are a confident team, especially when we play an a non-conference team,” Wolf said. “The FCIAC is the strongest league in the state. They might have the higher ranking than us, but they didn’t play all those tough teams in the regular season like we did. We were prepared and tested by a lot of teams in the FCIAC.”
The Blue Knights cut the deficit to 19-16 midway through the second set, but that’s when Greenwich pulled through, keyed by another kill from Wolf, an ace from Egan and a perfectly placed shot over the blockers by Rafferty.
It looked like Southington gained momentum in the third set, as they built a 14-10 lead. However Big Red stormed back and knotted things up at 15-15. That’s when Greenwich put the pressure on and halted Southington. Beneville had several serves that the Blue Knights couldn’t control, Wolf had several kills and blocks and Egan found some holes in the Southington defense.
Just like that it was 24-18 and time for Rafferty to connect on the semifinal-clinching shot.
“Throughout this whole tournament, we’ve been playing with so much energy and so much enthusiasm that it’s helped us get above other teams,” Rafferty said. “Southington got very quiet as the game was going along and we just got louder and louder. It was a great feeling. Our teamwork and communication together is great. We work so well as a team. All 15 of us are so close and we help each other out in everything.”
For Greenwich, this is the first trip back to the CIAC class LL finals since the 2010 season. In that game, the Lady Cardinals fell behind 2-0 and were within points of losing the third game.
However Big Red stormed back and won 3-2 (24-26 13-25 25-20 25-21 15-13) in a thriller. Oh, and the team Greenwich faced was, yup, Fairfield Ludlowe High School.
“We came back and took the lsat three and that was huge,” Lapham said, remembering the 2010 game. “We should have won the first set, but let it slip away. This group is tough. We had a vision back in June to go for it and now we have the opportunity to do something special. We’re going up there and it’s evened up. We beat them [this year], they beat us and now lets go figure it out.”
