SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – The Baystate Academy Charter volleyball team Friday used two big comebacks to get back at Mount Greylock and go back to the Division 5 State Semi-Finals.

 

The fourth-seeded Bulls (19-2) rallied from a 20-8 deficit to win the first set and 13-4 deficit in the fourth to finish off a 25-23, 25-13, 18-25, 25-22 win at the South End Community Center.

 

The victory avenged a 3-0 loss to the Mounties in last year’s D5 Final Four, giving Baystate a big step toward realizing the motto on its team T-shirts this fall: “Unfinished Business.”

 

“We said from Day One, we’re going to wear these shirts because we fell short,” Baystate coach Hector Rivera said. “[Mount Greylock] did amazing. There’s nothing to take away from them. They were better last year than us. But this year, we came ready.

 

“We marked our calendars. We knew that to go deep, we were gonna have to face them one day. And today was the day.”

 

It started out looking like it was going to be a day for the 2023 State Champs from Williamstown.

 

A four-point run on Tyanna Lepicier’s serve gave the Mounties an 11-5 lead, and two sideouts later, Annabelle Coody served three points, the last on a kill by Kylie Sweren to make it 15-6.

 

Another Sweren kill pushed the margin to 19-8, and an unforced error by the Bulls gave Mount Greylock a 12-point lead with five points to go to claim the set.

 

But Baystate got a sideout and  five-point run on Keishalee Guzman’s serve to get back in the set at 20-14.

 

It was 23-20 for the Mounties when the serve got to Baystate’s Aymar Matos, who served two aces and got two kills from Shaneidy Hernandez in a five-point run to give her team a 1-0 lead in the match.

 

Hernandez was a force at the net all night for the Bulls.

 

“They’re a really a big momentum team, and they just keep pumping [Hernandez] the ball,” Mount Greylock coach Greg Geyer said. “We knew that going in. They made good adjustments against our attack. They’re a good team.”

 

Baystate took over the second set midway through when it took a 19-9 lead on an eight point run by Guzman, a stretch that included two kills and a block from Hernandez.

 

But after giving up a 12-point lead in the first set and losing by 12 points in the second, Mount Greylock fought back.

 

Ninth-grader Lepicier again came up big at the service line, serving six straight points to open a 14-8 lead.

 

Baystate rallied to cut the margin to one at 15-14, but a tip by Kiera Kirstensen gave Mount Greylock a sideout, and a two points on a pair of Sweren kills on Emily Alvarez’ serve gave the Mounties a working margin again at 19-16.

 

Baystate never got closer than three points the rest of the way as Mount Greylock got back in the match with a 25-18 win.

 

Geyer said it was the Mounties’ resilience that kept them alive.

 

“We have some amazing veterans on this team,” he said. “They are seniors, and they’re graduating and they’ve had an amazing four years, absolutely. And that’s shown in our record.

 

“We also have a lot of new players, and they have grown so fast and gone so far this year.”

 

Mount Greylock carried its momentum into the fourth set.

 

Alvarez served three aces in a five-point run to take a 5-0 lead at the outset. And Sweren put away three more aces to stretch the margin to 9-1.

 

A kill from Coody stretched the lead to 13-4 and gave the Mounites a sideout. But Mount Greylock did not earn a point on its next three serves while Baystate chipped away at the margin with three-point runs from Guzman and Hernandez to pull within a point at 15-14.

 

A block by Ashley Cespedes gave the Bulls a sideout down 16-15, and Alanys Diaz served five straight points, the last on an ace, to give her team a four-point lead.

 

Mount Greylock got back within a point when Coody put down a kill at 20-19, but a three-point run on Matos’ serve gave Baystate a match point at 24-19.

 

The Mounties earned a sideout, and senior Kelsey MacHaffie served two points to deny two more match points, but Zaida Colon delivered a kill to close out the match and end Mount Greylock’s reign as state champion.

 

The Mounties finish with a record of 19-4, a Western Massachusetts Class C Championship and a  13-0 record in their home gym – a year after graduating seven seniors, including one of the first all-state volleyball players from Berkshire County in more than a dozen years.

 

“I’m incredibly proud,” Geyer said of the 2024 Mounties. “This team has never had any drama. This team has always worked hard in practice. They’re just really supportive of each other. And that helps the learning, especially. Our seniors are great, great leaders. They really carried those guys in a good way, in a leadership way, and brought them along.”