Upper Merion advanced to Saturday’s District One AAA semifinals while CR North and Pennsbury saw their seasons come to an end.
Upper Merion was the lone SOL team to escape Thursday’s District One AAA quarterfinal round unscathed. The defending district champions – who earned a berth in the state tournament - swept Council Rock North while top-seeded Bishop Shanahan defeated Pennsbury in three straight. Upper Merion will face sixth-seeded Downingtown East in a semifinal contest on Saturday at William Tennent at 2:30 p.m. East upset third-seeded Garnet Valley 3-1 in a quarterfinal match on Thursday. In the other district semifinal, Bishop Shanahan will take on fourth-seeded Strath Haven.
#2 UPPER MERION 3, #7 COUNCIL ROCK NORTH 0 (25-15, 25-17-25-17)
Mel Ingram doesn’t think her serve is anything special.
“I don’t serve that hard,” the Upper Merion junior said. “(Coach Tony Funsten) just tells me to serve hard, take something off, serve hard, take some off, and that’s pretty much what it is.”
Whatever Ingram did turned the tide in both the first and second sets of Thursday’s district quarterfinal match. In the first set, Ingram stepped to the service line with the Vikings clinging to a 13-12 lead. Although she served for just three points, it was the first real separation in the game and marked the beginning of a 13-3 Viking tear to close out the match.
In the second set, the Vikings trailed 9-8 when Ingram stepped to the service line. By the time she left, the Vikings led 14-9. They never looked back.
“I think once one person just made a wrong pass, we all kind of panicked,” Rock North senior Lauren Blachowski said. “It’s a hard serve. It’s really tough to pass. It comes at you, and it moves and drops. You feel like it’s easy, and at the last second, you react a little too slow.
“I was having a hard time – I was losing focus, and I kept thinking about my passing mistakes. I think everyone was, and it started branching off to individuals. I think that’s when we started falling apart.”
Funsten acknowledged that Ingram’s serve is deceptively difficult to handle.
“She hits it and it floats, but it’s on you so fast,” he said. “She strikes her serve extraordinarily hard, and it’s got topspin.
“When people are successful and you’re not sure why, it’s usually because there’s something subtle about what they do. She serves from a different angle. There’s a lot of reasons.”
While the Indians struggled, the Vikings did not.
“They don’t make many errors,” Blachowski said. “They’re such a calm, collected team, and we have so many emotions when we play.
“We go up and then we got down. We’re excited, we’re panicking, and you look over at them after they get a kill, and they’re calm.”
The Vikings – who upped their record to 19-0 – have learned the importance of maintaining their composure during a season that has included one challenging match after another.
“I think it’s good to keep your composure on the court,” senior Casey Griffith said. “You definitely get excited when you get points, but when you lose a point, just bring your team together and make sure everyone stays up and no one gets down.
“That will turn the game around if you get down because the other team will take advantage of it.”
Griffith – the recipient of a volleyball scholarship to UMBC where she will play defensive libero – delivered 18 kills to lead the Vikings at the net.
“I told her I thought she was being a little nonchalant and not completely focused,” Funsten said. “She said okay and then served for five points and her next four swings were kills.
“She responded to what I said, and she’s just so available all the time. She mixed it up, and that’s crucial. She doesn’t have to crush the ball every time. She will roll it, tip it and hit it down the line. She has tremendous body control.”
Ingram finished with nine kills, three aces and eight digs. Senior setter Natalie O’Neil had five kills and 28 assists. Sophomore Emily Shannon led the defense with 15 digs.
For the Indians, Blachowski had a team high six kills. Erin Stewart led the defense with 20 digs while sophomore setter Krista Campbell had 18 assists.
On this night, nothing came easily for an Indian squad that has been out of school all week.
“Obviously, Upper Merion is a very good team,” coach Kinsey Lynch said. “They did not make very many mistakes, they were very methodical in the way that they played, and we had a very hard time getting into rhythm.
“We didn’t gain momentum when we should have, and our serving was the worst I have seen it all year. Our passing was maybe around one graded on a three, two, one scale, and we had a very hard time getting into rhythm with our passing.”
At the start of the third set, the Indians suffered a setback when – with the score deadlocked 1-1 – senior captain Rachel McLaughlin-McManis went down with an injury.
“I told the girls before the third game, I didn’t even care win or lose, I just wanted to take at least one game from them and play better volleyball,” Lynch said. “That’s all I wanted them to do – play better volleyball because as Tony Funsten knows and as I know, the team that showed up tonight was not the team that played the last several matches. That was tough.”
During Ingram’s three-point service run in the first set, Emily Shannon delivered a block, Griffith a kill and the Indians had a passing miscue. The Indians would get no closer than three points the rest of the way.
“We’re not what they’re used to seeing,” Funsten said. “We attack from different angles.
“When we attacked from the outside, we got blocked. Their defense is really predicated on the blocking. If you can avoid the block, some other things get revealed.”
Not a whole lot changed in the second set. The Indians led 9-7 after a Viking net violation, but after delivering a kill, Ingram stepped to the service line. Griffith delivered back-to-back winners – the first on a traditional kill and the second on a tip. Then Ingram came through with a service ace, putting the Vikings on top 11-9 and prompting Lynch to call a timeout.
An Emily Shannon kill was followed by a Griffith line kill, and another Griffith winner put the Vikings on top 14-9. A Blachowski kill interrupted the run, but the Indians never threatened.
“We just control our serve, our serve receive,” Griffith said. “They like to tip a lot, so we adjusted our defense to cover the tips. We just come to play.
“People probably look at us because we’re short, and they’re like, ‘Oh, we’ll beat them at the net,’ but they really don’t. We may be short, but we can get up and block, and our defense plays really well.”
The Indians took a 1-0 lead in the third set after a Hailey Burns tip, but the Vikings responded with an 11-2 run to seize control of the game and the match.
“It was very difficult,” Lynch said. “Every single time we were trying to gain momentum, it just seemed like nothing was going our way.
“As I was looking through the stats, we gave them between 10-12 points in unforced errors. I told my girls – you cannot play in a playoff game and make that many mistakes and expect to win, especially against a team like Upper Merion where they weren’t making many mistakes.”
The Indians closed out a successful season with a 14-5 record and a National Conference title.
#1 BISHOP SHANAHAN 3, #8 PENNSBURY 0 (25-10, 25-15, 25-16)
A week layoff did no favors to the Falcons, who appeared to have all kinds of momentum after dispatching of Sun Valley in three straight in last Thursday’s second round match.
That momentum was nowhere to be found when they took the court in Thursday’s district quarterfinal match.
“It was just a bad night,” coach Michael Felter said. “We just did not show up ready to play.
“If you’re going to beat a team like that, you better be ready to play. I said to the girls, ‘If we can play the way we played last week and certain things go our way, anything is possible,’ but I told them we had to play the way we did the first two rounds. We did not play well.”
The Falcons totaled just 15 kills in the match and never displayed any kind of continuity.
“We didn’t practice Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday,” Falter said. “Today we set up the nets for about an hour and played for an hour before we got on the bus to go to Shanahan.
“The main difference in the match was they served really aggressively, and we couldn’t pass. We passed 1.5 as a team, and even if you’re going up against teams at your level, it’s going to be tough to win.”
Falter thought his team would have an advantage with Jae Jackson and Sarah Sweetland in the middle of the net. The duo combined for just six kills with each delivering three.
“Their middles aren’t the strongest, but we couldn’t pass the ball at all,” the Falcons’ first-year coach said. “I think we only set the middle a combined eight times all night because we could not pass.
“I give our outside hitters credit. The passing weren’t there, but when they were getting set, they were swinging aggressively, and they were being effective. They’re just a really good team. They’re really solid.”
The Falcons closed out the year with a 15-4 record overall (10-2 SOL).
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