Sweren Serves Mounties to Tournament Rout
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – Mount Greylock’s Kylie Sweren started and ended Tuesday’s Western Massachusetts Class D quarter-final match with long service runs as the Mounties rolled over Pioneer Valley in three sets on Tuesday evening.
Sweren served 18 aces, and Celina Savage notched 14 kills in the 25-12, 25-6, 25-6 victory to send the top-seeded Mounties into the semi-finals of the eight-team tourney.
“I just focused on my toss and trying to put it in a good spot,” Sweren said.
Kelsey MacHaffie had eight aces and Talia Kapiloff had three for the Mounties, who compiled 32 aces as a team in the three-set win.
Early trouble on Mount Greylock’s serve receive allowed Pioneer Valley to take a 5-1 lead in the first set.
But Sweren went to the back line with her team facing a 5-2 deficit and did not give up the serve until it had a 13-6 lead.
Mount Greylock’s coach said she is a versatile player who can help the Mounties in a lot of places.
“She’s a very clutch, reliable player,” Greg Geyer said. “She does everything really well. We’d love to have her hitting more, getting her more swings, but we obviously have a lot of good hitters.”
Short service runs by Kapiloff and Charlotte Coody (three kills, two aces) later in the set pushed the margin to 22-11, and a kill by Savage gave Mount Greylock its first set point at 24-11. Two serves later, a service error ended the set.
In Set No. 2, it was a 10-point run on MacHaffie’s serve that opened up a 15-1 lead for the Mounties. Sweren had a more modest four-point run to get the margin to 20-2, and Giana Pesce eventually served out the set.
The final set went back and forth in the early stages before Sweren got the serve with the Mounties ahead, 14-11.
She served seven straight points to open up a 10-point margin, and Pioneer Valley never got any closer.
Kapiloff had an ace to set up match point, which came when the visitors could not return a deep ball from Pesce off a Sweren set.
Mount Greylock (14-3), which started the week ranked third in the commonwealth in Division 5, moves on to Friday’s semi-final against either Mohawk Trail or Lenox, who meet on Wednesday in Buckland.
“We’re coming together as a team in a lot of ways,” Geyer said. “And we’re playing our system well. We always have stuff to work on, every day, and we’ll be working on a couple of things tomorrow.”