Lee Volleyball Rallies to Straight-Set Win
LEE, Mass. -- The Lee volleyball team battled back from deficits in all three sets to earn a straight-set win over Pittsfield on Thursday evening.
The Generals led by eight points in the first set, four points in the second and nine in the third, but the Wildcats prevailed, 25-23,25-20,25-23.
"We did not make it easy on ourselves," Lee coach Julia Warner said. "Playing from behind is not an easy thing to do, and we dug ourselves a hole in each set. The were able to come together and pull themselves out of with with a good pass.
"We've been working with a new rotation. We have two new setters this year, so we're working with our consistency in our passing to get more consitency in our offense. And once that sort of kicked into gear in the middle of each set, it was off to the races. And we were able to pull out a three-set win, which was wonderful against a competitive PHS team."
Leighanna Willamson recorded a kill early in the first set to give the Generals an 11-3 lead. And Pittsfield maintained an advantage for a few rotations before Katelyn Clark went to the service line for Lee.
She took the ball with her team behind, 16-11. When she gave it up, the Wildcats had a 20-17 lead.
Her nine-point run featured six of Clark's game-high eight aces.
"Katelyn is able to do a float serve," Warner said. "What happens in a float serve is it's a little less predictable because it moves in the air -- very similar to a knuckleball. Through all of her years, she has been one of our more consistent servers.
"And she's worked to develop pace on her serve as well as having a float serve. It's a very difficult serve to pass, and that's something that was definitely to our benefit."
First-year Pittsfield coach Ashley Paradis said her team needs to work on some things to handle tough serves.
"A really deep serve, hard serve," Paradis said. "From our side, it's just more just knowing baseline, where we are when we have girls covering deep, knowing where the line is so we can call that. It's definitely somethign we'll be working on."
Pittsfield took a more modest four-point lead in the second set thanks to a five-point run on the serve of Brianna Palmieri. Lexi Sondrini and Ava Sinopoli each had a kill, and Williamson had a block in the run, which gave the Generals a 15-11 lead before Lee earned a side out.
It was still a two-point Pittsfield lead late in the set, but Lee earned four straight points on Lizzy Brown's serve to take the lead for good.
Brown had two of her three aces during that stretch.
She also posted a game-high 15 kills in the match. Makayla Shuerer and Maddy LaRock posted 14 and 10 assists, respectively for the Wildcats.
Sondrini had four kills and Maggie Burke had six assists for Pittsfield.
Burke also served nine points to open the third set, recording an ace to give Pittsfield a 9-0 lead before losing the serve.
A couple of rotations later, Lee used kills by Brown on three straight points to start a five-point run on Schuerer's serve to tie the set, 11-11.
The Wildcats took the lead with another five-point run, this one on Brown's serve, to go ahead, 17-12.
Lee led, 23-17, late, but Pittsfield battled hard to stay alive, closing to within one point at 24-23, before a service error ended the match.
"I think it's just kind of a matter of getting out of our own heads, a little bit," Paradis said of the lost leads. "We do a good job of getting the lead. But I think the second we fall back a little bit, we get in our own heads. We just have to work on working on the next point, moving forward and pushing to the next point."
Pittsfield is off until Tuesday when it hosts Mount Everett.
Lee goes to Lenox on Friday.