Lee Survives Five-Setter to Reach State Quarter-Finals

LEE, Mass. – In a match filled with swings, Lee’s Karalynn Hopkins delivered some of the biggest.

 

Hopkins delivered 17 kills in a wild – and wildly entertaining – five set win over Millis in the Division 5 State Tournament Round of 16.

 

She also pulled up 12 digs to finish with a double-double as the Wildcats survived, 20-25, 25-9, 11-25, 25-18, 15-12.

 

Hopkins, who served three aces in the match, also had a eight-point run on her serve in the second set, when Lee came back to even the match for the first time.

 

After the fourth-seeded Wildcats’ dominating second-set win, Millis bounced back right away, jumping out to an 11-1 lead en route to a 25-9 win to go ahead, 2-1, in the match.

 

“It was hard to come back from that, but we kept pushing and kept pushing and brought that energy,” Hopkins said. “And the energy is what we needed. The energy carried us.”

 

The energy took Lee to a convincing fourth set win, and they took that momentum into the first-to-15 fifth set, grabbing an 11-2 lead.

 

But the visitors refused to quit and got within a point at 11-10 with a monster seven-point run on the serve of Meredith Gatz.

 

Lee coach Julia Warner called timeout twice in that run – the second time after Millis (10-10) closed to within a point.

 

Coming out of the timeout, Hopkins got a kill to give her team a 12-10 lead and a side out.

 

Kayla Clark then served two points to get to match point at 14-10 with a tip at the net by Mya Andre.

 

Millis got a sideout and staved off two match points before a service error ended the contest and sent Lee on to the state quarter-finals, where it will meet either Baystate Academy or Cape Cod Tech, who play on Tuesday in Springfield.

 

Warner credited her team with having the composure not to break when Millis made its comeback in the fifth set.

 

“My message in both of our timeouts was that we were still in the driver’s seat, because in both timeouts, we were still ahead in points,” Warner said. “I told them to play like it and to not to get into this scramble mode of thinking and to play cool, calm and collected.

 

“It just takes one swing. It doesn’t need to be a back-and-forth. So we were able to come out of that second timeout and just have a clean bump, set and then Karalynn got the kill.”

 

Alexis Masten started the match with two of her 11 kills to get Lee off to a strong start, but then the teams settled into a back-and-forth battle. Millis took the biggest lead of the set at 19-13, but Lee got back to within three before Gatz was able to serve out the set.

 

Millis took that momentum into the second with a 4-0 start, but Lee rebounded and got within a point when the visitors’ service error gave the Wildcats a side out up, 7-6.

 

That’s when Clark provided a spark, stepping in from the bench and serving five straight points to give Lee a 12-6 lead and a little bit of breathing room for the first time in the match.

 

“She’s a tremendous server,” Warner said. “She brings great service pressure. She also is able to spot serve, and she was able to just give them pressure that they weren’t able to bring back. I would say she has the strongest, most consistent serve of everyone on our team, so that’s something that was really great to have and a good moment for her.”

 

A Gatz kill ended Clark’s run, but Hopkins earned a point to get the serve right back for Lee. And then she went to the service line and served eight straight to open up a 21-7 lead for the Wildcats. A couple of rotations later, Julianna Schuerer (24 assists) ended the set with an ace.

 

The third set was all Millis after Olivia Mathews served seven points to open up an early 11-1 lead. Lee won just two points on its serve in the set as Millis cruised to the win and a 2-1 lead in the match.

 

Hopkins said the talk in between sets was pretty simple.

 

“Basically, it was that we had to bring our energy up,” she said. “Because we knew that we were making errors. It was a mental game for us, so we knew we had to do better.”

 

Lee did so right out of the gate with five points from Schuerer to take control of the set.

 

Gatz got her team back into it with a four-point run to close to within a point at 11-10, but a kill from Andre (four kills) got the serve to Hopkins, who served three points to push the margin to 15-10.

 

Autumn Schwab (12 digs, three aces) pushed the margin 10 points with a five-point service run to get to 21-11, and a Hopkins kill ended the set at 25-18 to even the match and set the stage for the dramatic fifth set.

 

Lee, which lost last year on the road in the Sweet 16, goes back to the quarter-finals for the first time since 2021.

 

Warner said she had not given any thought to the Wildcats’ potential Elite Eight opponent, which could be No. 4 Baystate, a Western Massachusetts Class B finalist earlier this fall.

 

“I haven’t gotten past today,” she said. “I knew tonight was going to be a difficult match. Seeding doesn’t mean much when you have to actually come out and do it.

 

“I’ve been talking to them about this conflict of looking at the whole picture of post-season and also not looking past today. … In holding both of those things, I have not looked into Baystate Academy just yet, so we’ll see who comes out of that match tomorrow. And then we get back in the gym for a few more days.”