Mount Greylock Sweeps Its Way into State Quarter-Finals
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – The Mount Greylock volleyball team has played a lot of big matches the last couple of years.
And it has won enough of them to maintain its confidence even when it hits a bump in the road.
In Tuesday’s Division 5 Sweet 16 match against Blackstone-Millville, it hit two: six-point deficits early in the second and third sets. Each time, the Mounties came back to complete a three-set sweep and earn a date in the quarter-finals.
One year after upsetting the then-third-seeded Chargers in Blackstone, this year’s No. 4 Mounties will be home in the Elite 8 on Friday night playing for a return trip to the state semi-finals.
“If you love what you’re doing, the better you do,” Celina Savage said. “And I feel like we all love what we’re doing. We all love to play with each other. It just makes the whole game different when we all start to enjoy each point.
“Like, toward the end there, we really started to enjoy each point. It just changes the whole game. Even if we come in tired, we need to have that five or 10 minutes of focusing and starting to like what we’re doing. And all the tiredness goes away.”
Savage had 14 kills and three aces to lead the Mounties in a 25-16, 25-23, 25-20 win.
Mount Greylock wore out the visitors early in the first set as an eight-point run on the serve of Kylie Sweren gave the Mounties a 14-3 lead. A kill by Savage capped that run, and Mount Greylock never looked back.
Blackstone-Millville got as close as seven points a couple of times, but a bump by Savage late gave Mount Greylock a sideout and set point at 24-16, and Sweren (two kills, two aces) served out the set to put her team up, 1-0.
A couple of Kylie Sacco aces and a couple of unforced errors by Mount Greylock led to a four-point run to put Blackstone-Millville up, 11-6, early in the second set.
Mount Greylock coach Greg Geyer used one of his timeouts to break the Chargers’ momentum. Later, he agreed that his team is at the point where it has the confidence to climb out of those holes.
“I think they should have that confidence,” he said. “I hope they do. There’s been a lot of those.”
Mount Greylock chipped away, and Julia Dechaine (two kills, two aces) served three points, including an ace, to get the Mounties within a point at 14-13. Eventually, it was 23-23 after a Charger serving error gave the Mounties a side out.
Dechaine served the next two points as Savage put away set point to give the Mounties a 2-0 lead in the match.
Blackstone-Millville’s Kayla Niemczyk served three points early in the third to give her team an 8-2 lead, and the Chargers led as late as 12-11.
But a Sweren kill got the serve back to the Mounties, and Dechaine served the next seven points to give Mount Greylock the lead for good.
The Chargers pulled to within a point at 21-20, but a service error gave the serve to Savage, who finished the match.
Geyer said it was a different Blackstone-Millville team than the one his squad beat, 3-1, in last year’s Sweet 16. But it still was a dangerous opponent.
“They lost seven seniors [from 2021],” Geyer said. “They didn’t have anybody [last year] like [Alexyss Chartier]. No. 5 was a sophomore last year. She was a damn good hitter, and I was really happy with the way we dug her. We were able to stop a lot of her hits.”
Mount Greylock awaits the winner of Wednesday’s Sweet 16 match-up between No. 6 Easthampton and No. 11 Millis.