Even with her team down by a seemingly insurmountable lead in the fifth and deciding set, Mascenic volleyball coach Missy Salo wasn’t worried. Well, she wasn’t too worried, anyway.
“If there’s any team in the past however many years I’ve been coaching can pull this off, it’s this team,” Salo said after Thursday night’s playoff game against Epping.
The Blue Devils had just beaten Mascenic in an extremely hard-fought game to finish the season, and it was a tough draw for the Vikings in the first playoff round.
“All night long, our strategy was to keep the energy on our side,” Salo said. “If you noticed, their energy level was like, up here. That plays into the psyche of any game that you’re playing. They don’t give up on balls, they dive for every single thing.”
After Mascenic took the first game on Thursday, Epping, bolstered by the late arrival of a crew of rowdy fans, seized the energy. The Blue Devils battled back from an early deficit in game two and took that game, and the next, 25-12, 25-14, leaning on the baffling serves of senior Sophia Randall.
Then, the Vikings rallied around their two seniors, Meagan Brand and Stephanie Somero.
“They kept saying ‘Do it for Meg and Steph, do it for Meg and Steph,’ the two seniors,” Salo said.. We just told them – ‘Say it and mean it, and execute.’”
Execute they did. With Epping on their heels after absorbing a barrage of powerful spikes from sophomore Shannon Agonis, Brand worked the net brilliantly, using touch to drop the ball over the first line of defense. Brand (nine blocks, six kills) and the Vikings took game four and forced a decisive fifth game.
Epping came out strong in the fifth, and went up 11-5 in a game to 15 — a tough row to hoe.
“We’ve proven all year long that it’s difficult for us to dig ourselves into a hole and then completely come out,” Salo said. We come up and we peek our head out and we go back in. I told them tonight, we can’t go in the hole completely, we’ve got to get out, and help each other.”
That’s when Somero stepped up and served the Vikings back into it. The senior notched four in a row before surrendering the serve. Epping took it back, but gave it up at 13-10, and Melonie Ojala came to the line.
“You’ve got to serve with pressure. You have to! It’s only going to get more difficult,” Salo said.
Ojala served, served and served again, and the Vikings and Devils took part in a number of wild rallies, each going Mascenic’s way. As the ball dropped on Mascenic’s side, just over the sideline, the Vikings erupted as the referee called it out. The game was tied. Another Ojala serve, and another, and like that, it was over. Mascenic’s fans stormed the court in celebration of the win.
The Vikings had a day to soak in the celebratory mood before traveling to No. 3 Farmington, Though Mascenic would take the first set, 25-18, and looked dominant early, Farmington would bounce back and ended up taking three sets in a row to win the contest and end Mascenic’s season.
The Vikings, with only two seniors and an undefeated JV team, should be stronger than ever next year.