WEST SPRINGFIELD - It was the West Springfield girls volleyball team that won the Western Massachusetts Division 2 semifinal Thursday night, but Amherst Regional made the Terriers work for it.

The Hurricanes overcame a nine-point deficit in the fourth set to force a fifth, and stayed even with West Springfield for much of the contest.

But the second-seeded Terriers defeated No. 3 Amherst 3-2 in a back-and-forth match. That was reflected in the set scores of 25-23, 13-25, 25-19, 26-28, 16-14.

The Hurricanes finished the season at 15-4.

West Springfield (21-1) takes on top-seeded Longmeadow at 7 p.m. Saturday at Holyoke Community College for the western Massachusetts championship. The Lancers defeated Chicopee Comp 3-1 in the other semifinal Thursday.

With the Terriers up 2-1 in games and 16-7 in the fourth set, Amherst began to gather some momentum thanks to big plays by Jennifer Rogers and Sonia Brown, eventually leading to a nine-point run that gave the Hurricanes a 24-22 lead.

The teams began trading points until Amherst took a 27-26 lead on a kill by Rogers. The next point appeared to end when a Hurricane mishit went backwards. But Hilary Woodworth darted back nearly to the high school lobby to keep the ball in play, setting up a kill for Piso Mohlala that ended the fourth set.

The fifth set picked up where the fourth left off, with the teams trading points. But when West Springfield took a 15-14 advantage after an Amherst error, Vanessa Ruiz got the kill for the win by the Terriers.

"When I called time-out (midway through the fourth game), I told them not to worry about the outcome. They just had to focus on the point. They just refused to get down," Amherst coach Kacey Schmitt said.

While West Springfield relied on big hits by Ruiz (20 kills, three aces), Kelley Bryant (11) and Alyssa Danilow (five), the Hurricanes focused on defense. Woodworth (35 digs), Rogers (23 digs, 11 kills, four aces), Brown (20 digs, 14 kills, two aces) and Mohlala (19 digs) all reached double digits in digs, and Khalea Glasgow and Brianna McBride had four blocks apiece.

"We sort of have different things we're good at. They have some really strong hitters. We work really hard on defense, and we made them work really hard this game," Schmitt said.

A bright spot for Amherst was the senior leadership of Rogers, whose biggest kills seemed to come when the momentum began to shift in the fourth set. She started the fifth with three straight aces.

"She just said that she wasn't going to give up in this game, and I think people feed off of that," Schmitt said. "She's been that way all season. She's been pretty money. If she makes a mistake, she gets mad at herself momentarily and then gets past it, which is big for any athlete."