Lenox Pulls Out Sweep in Western Mass Quarters
LENOX, Mass. – On a night when the Lenox volleyball team appeared to be cruising to an easy victory, it instead showed the heart needed to secure the win and advance to Wednesday’s semi-finals of the Western Massachusetts Class C tournament.
Hailey Armold had five aces and six kills for Lenox in a 25-16, 25-14, 26-24 win over sixth-seeded Athol in the quarter-finals.
Emily Barenski had seven digs, but it was her three aces in a key third-set service run that made the difference.
After two lackluster sets for the Bears, they awoke from hibernation and built a 21-14 lead late in the third set.
A service error gave Lenox a sideout and sent Barenski to the service line with her team down by six points.
She then served six straight points to tie the set.
Two rotations later, Kelsey Kirchner delivered her sixth kill of the game off Etta Schnackenberg’s 17th set to cash in Lenox’s second match point of the contest.
“That was fantastic,” Lenox coach Steve Laurin said of Barenski’s big run. “I told her she needed to do 10 [serves] in a row. She said, ‘Ten?’ I said, ‘Yeah … You did 100 yesterday in practice, so there’s no reason you can’t do 10 in a row.
“She nailed those serves, and she is awesome under pressure. Emily, I don’t think she feels the pressure.”
Kirchner said that Lenox needed to regroup after finding itself on the brink of giving back a set.
“We just had to pull it back together,” she said. “Our heads were kind of out of it, So we had to come together as a team, talk, move to the ball, call for help if we needed it. And we really pulled together.”
Third-seeded Lenox was (12-7) was firing on all cylinders early.
The Millionaires never trailed in the first set and built their lead a little at a time – one point here, two points there – until a Barenski kill late gave her team a commanding 23-15 lead. Three points later, Anna Nealon (six digs, four kills) delivered a serve the Bears could not return to end the set.
It was the same m.o. In the second set as Lenox steadily pulled ahead. The biggest service runs came from Armold early on to open a 4-1 lead. Later, Claire O’Brien served three straight points, the last on a combined block from Keator and Grace Julieano, to stretch the lead to 11-3.
Athol never got closer than seven points the rest of the way.
But it did put a major scare into Lenox in the third, erasing an early 9-6 deficit to take its first lead on a free ball at 11-10. The visitors led, 21-14, after a Lenox attack went wide. But then the Millionaires got the ball back and gave it to Barenski.
Laurin said he was happy to see his squad battle through some adversity to advance in the tournament.
“I feel like a lot of times, we play to the other team’s tempo, for whatever reason,” he said. “So we’ve talked a lot about mindset and trying to get the idea of, ‘Hey, we’re in a sprint here rather than playing to 25. Think of this next point as the last point.’
“So that’s one thing that we try to work on. … I think when the real pressure’s on, when they see the score up there and say, ‘Oh, we’re down by nine,’ it’s time to turn it on.”
Lenox Thursday will look to turn things up a notch in the Western Mass semifinals when they visit Easthampton. The Eagles beat Lenox, 3-0, in the season opener before taking a 3-1 win in the rematch.