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Crestview upsets Mooney; South Range holds on
By Brian Dzenis
SALEm
It was a rough day to be a favorite.
A wild evening of volleyball at Salem High School saw No.1 seed Cardinal Mooney fall in three two-point games to No. 6 Crestview in the early match and No. 2 South Range came dangerously close to becoming the second upset of the night in the Division III district semifinals, needing five games to vanquish No. 3 seed United.
Mooney had the record and the pedigree, but also the pressure. Crestview, a .500 team coming into the tournament, went further than its seed suggested, so the Rebels weren’t concerned with meeting any expectations and played loose.
“I think everyone knew that they had everything to lose coming in as the No. 1 seed and we came in at No. 6 as the underdog,” Crestview’s MacKenzie Daub said. “We weren’t ready to give up those early morning practices. We just wanted to play again.”
The Rebels lost in four to the Cardinals in the regular season, a match that also featured some two-point games, but that loss, among others, prepared them for Monday.
“We played a tough schedule this year and we lost a lot of close games and our girls have really learned to play to win instead of playing not to lose and tonight they played to win,” Crestview coach Alisha Auer said.
Mooney coach Tony Gorvet was quick to call out his team for having the opposite mentality.
“Not to take anything away from Crestview, they came here to win and they outplayed us, they wanted it more than we did,” he said. “They came here playing to win and we came here not to lose.”
Mooney actually had the lead for most of the first game until the Rebels tied it at 21 and eventually won, 25-23. The second game was a 34-32 marathon in which it seemed as if both teams had exhausted every variation of its set plays and the game turned into who could better improvise.
In the final game, Crestview jumped out to a 9-2 lead before Mooney stormed back to tie the game at 17, then the two teams traded the lead until they were tied again at 24. That’s when the Cardinals served the ball into the net and Daub finished the upset with a kill down the middle.
“We just gave it our all and we wanted it so bad,” Daub said. “Everyone played the best they could. We talked as a team and we played as team.”
Daub tied Brooke Harper for the team lead in kills with 14 to go with three blocks.
“It was just the best experience knowing that we lost to them in the regular season and then beat them in three straight when it actually counted,” Daub said.
Mooney’s Autumn DeSantis had nine kills, three blocks and three aces.
South Range jumped out to a two-game lead on United, but just couldn’t quite finish the job. The Golden Eagles got better as the match went on after getting pounded in a 25-13 loss in game one and then pulling it to 25-23 in game two. United then took the next two games to force a game five. United’s Logan Dagy came out ablaze in the final game scoring six of her team’s first eight points as her team jumped to an 8-4 lead, leading to a South Range timeout.
“Basically, we had our heads down for a little bit, we thought we were going to lose, but we didn’t want that to be the end of our season,” Emily Moretti said of that tiemout. “We just picked it up and we won,”
The Raiders found the extra gear needed to score four unanswered points to tie the game and come out ahead in the end with a Lynnie Ritter kill to call it a night.
Ritter led South Range with 18 kills, three digs, two aces, nine points and six blocks. Moretti had 18 digs, four kills, three aces and 13 points.
“I would say if there’s one thing my team does well is that they keep fighting no matter what and they’re very mentally strong and they just have the ability to push through no matter what the score is,” Raiders coach Rachel Storm-Baker said.
It’ll be player versus coach in the finals at 6 p.m. on Wednesday in Salem as Storm-Baker takes on her former coach in Crestview’s Auer.