Top-ranked Gilford wears down Coe-Brown for D-II volleyball title

By TIM O’SULLIVAN

Monitor staff

Published: 11-09-2019 9:45 PM

DERRY – Coe-Brown arrived at Saturday’s Division II volleyball championships relaxed and ready. The No. 6 Bears didn’t have the weight of expectations on their shoulders against top-ranked, undefeated, defending-champion Gilford, but they did have some confidence coming off a semifinal win at second-seeded Milford earlier in the week.

“I sensed they were focused and in the moment on the way here,” Coe-Brown coach Renee Zobel said. “But we know every time that we face Gilford this year we feel good, and then we get in the gym and that Gilford thing starts to trickle in and get in our heads a little bit.”

That Gilford thing showed up to open the match and again at the end as the Golden Eagles claimed a 3-1 decision at Pinkerton Academy to win its fifth D-II in the last nine years: 2011, ’12, ’15, ’18 and ’19. It was the third time this season Gilford has beaten Coe-Brown, which was playing in just the second final in program history (the Bears won it all in 2013).

“We were just excited to be here, no one saw us here at the end,” Coe-Brown senior captain Abby Jerome said. “We probably wouldn’t have believed it (if told at the start of the year they would be in the final), but then one day we just realized we could do this. We started playing for each other and not ourselves.”

That belief and selfless attitude helped the Bears (13-6) win four of their final five regular-season games and then take to the road for a pair of playoff upsets at No. 3 John Stark and at No. 2 Milford.

But the pressure of the final and facing the talented and disciplined Golden Eagles (19-0) outweighed that belief in the first set on Saturday. Coe-Brown made nervous errors in bunches, helping Gilford go on an early 13-3 run that eventually led to a 25-15 win.

“We started off with some nerves and then just got ourselves in a little bit too deep,” Zobel said.

But the Bears have been able to shake off poor sets all season long, including in their 3-1 semifinal win at Milford. So, after the first set on Saturday, Zobel reminded her team of that and few other things.

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“We had a nice discussion between set one and set two and said, ‘What we are we here to do? We’re here to play together, because that’s what we do,’ ” Zobel said. “And in the discussions leading up to this match I said, ‘What are you guys going to take away from this?’ And it wasn’t going to the state championship, it was each other, we’re going to take away each other and this experience together and that’s what it’s all about.”

The discussion worked. Junior Emily Morris (11 digs) went on a five-point run from the service line to open the second set to give Coe-Brown a 5-0 lead. From there, juniors Anneliese Wade (seven kills) and Nicki Smith (eight kills, three digs) got going as the Bears maintained that cushion for the entire set and Jerome (eight kills, 18 digs) served out the final point for a 25-20 win to tie the match at 1-1.

The Golden Eagles responded by upping their game in the third set. Gilford’s Abigail Warren, Riley McDonough, Kate Sullivan and Lindsey Sanderson were all excellent as the Golden Eagles rolled to a 25-8 win.

“Sometimes when we get in too big a deficit a couple of players will start to go down mentally and we just start to slide,” Zobel said.

But once again the Bears shook off the lousy set and came back swinging. This time Zobel also made some tactical changes, and the result was a quick 5-2 lead in the fourth set after three straight service points from sophomore setter Kaitlyn Miller, who finished the game with 27 assists, five digs and three kills.

When Gilford mounted an early comeback, Coe-Brown’s Smith answered a kill and an unreturned serve. Later, Jerome stopped the Golden Eagles from gaining momentum with a back-to-back kills. And when Miller hit an ace late in the set, the Bears had a 17-11 lead and it looked for sure like things were headed to a fifth set.

But Gilford used its experience and grit to grind away at that lead. Long points became the norm as the fourth set wore on, and the Golden Eagles won most of them.

Eventually the score knotted at 20-20 and the two teams traded the next six points to make it 23-23. That’s when Gilford’s Abigail O’Connor found a kill through the middle of the Coe-Brown defense, and then Sanderson hit a soft serve that just cleared the net, dropped short and clipped the sideline to give Gilford the title.

“We just let it get away from us,” Jerome said.

Her coach agreed.

“We got off to a great start in that fourth set,” Zobel said, “and then we started to engage our heads a little bit too much.”

(Tim O’Sullivan can be reached at 369-3341 or tosullivan@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @timosullivan20)]]>