Monument Mountain Outlasts Mount Greylock in Five Sets
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- For Monument Mountain senior Brianna Ayala, it was gut check time -- not once, but twice.
And when her team needed her most, she answered the call with the biggest serves of the night to give the Spartans a five-set win over Mount Greylock.
Ayala served three straight critical points without a return to start the fifth set and served two points at the end of the match to give Monument Mountain a 7-25, 25-23, 27-25, 13-25, 15-12 win.
“I tried not to put pressure on myself,” Ayala said. “Everyone was cheering me on, and I was like, ‘I can do this. I can do this.’ Obviously, there’s still pressure on me, and I was just like, ‘Hit the ball.’
“Every time I serve, I’m like, ‘Just in, just in.’ It doesn’t have to be a laser. It can even be a soft little thing. I just want it in. That’s the whole thing I want. And, thankfully, it kept going in.”
Ayala and Mia Wade had four aces apiece to lead the Spartans in that department.
The senior captain also passed out 25 assists -- many to Cate Consolati and Ava Cohen, who finished with nine and eight kills, respectively, to lead the Spartans’ attack.
Celina Savage had 18 kills, and Charlotte Coody added eight to lead Mount Greylock, which was playing without hitter Takiera Darrow. Coody also notched 13 aces for the Mounties (9-2).
The first set ended with a five-point run on Coody’s serve to wrap up a dominant 25-7 win. It looked like the Spartans were doomed to continue a run of frustration against their North County rivals.
“We’ve always had a tendency of [starting slow], which we all hate because we know we’re so much better,” Ayala said. “And everyone was so nervous because it’s Mount Greylock, and we almost always lose to them.
“Today, we were all on our ‘A’ game. We’ve been working toward this game. And because we all know we’re amazing players, we knew we could be them. The first set, it was a bunch of jitters, and we shouldn’t have let them get to us, but we did.”
In the second set, Monument Mountain took a six-point lead with a four-point run on Cohen’s serve. Ella Watson and Jade Abderhalden each had kills during the run, which got the Spartans’ lead to 15-9 before a Savage kill got Mount Greylock a side out.
The Spartans’ lead was 23-18 before Mount Greylock battled back to tie it.
Again, it was Savage, getting a side out with a kill and serving four straight points before Consolati’s kill got the serve back for Monument at 23-24. Mount Greylock could not return Consolati’s ensuing serve, and the Spartans evened the match, 1-1.
Each team battled back from four-point deficits in the third set.
A Cohen kill gave Monument Mountain the set’s first set point at 24-21, but again the Mounties fought back, taking a 25-24 lead on Talia Kapiloff’s three-point service run.
After a side out for the Spartans, Abderhalden closed out the match with an ace and an Ayala kill to give Monument Mountain a 2-1 lead.
In the fourth, Mount Greylock took control with a six-point service run by Kylie Sweren to turn a one-point deficit into an 11-6 lead that Mount Greylock never relinquished. A three-point run by Lanie Gill pushed the Mounties’ advantage to 17-8, and the serve came back around to Sweren, who closed out the set with an ace to force the deciding fifth set.
Mount Greylock coach Greg Geyer was happy to see his team battle back in the fourth set and pleased overall with its performance with a short roster.
“It was a great lesson for our team,” Geyer said. “We had players out there who had to replace an injured Takeira Darrow, and on a whole, they played great. I mean, those are huge shoes to fill.”
Ayala’s three-point run to start the fifth gave Monument Mountain an early lead, but the Mounties fought back to briefly lead at 9-8 and 10-9.
An Ella Saupe kill got the serve to Abderhalden, who served two points to give the Spartans a 12-10 lead, and they never trailed again. An Ella Watson kill at 12-12 gave the Spartans a side out, and Ayala went back to the service line.
“At one point, I looked over and everyone on the side kept calling my name,” Ayala said. “I was like, ‘Quiet please. I need to focus right now.’ I just tried to zone everyone out, the whole crowd, and just serve it in. I didn’t need an ace. I just wanted it in because then I knew we could pick it up and bring a hit into it.”
Monument Mountain (9-1) hosts Ware on Friday. Mount Greylock goes to Belchertown on Friday.