Top-seeded Frontier Regional girls volleyball sweeps Lenox
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SOUTH DEERFIELD - It was far from a perfect performance. In fact, head coach Sean MacDonald probably won't even consider it great.
For the most part, however, it was dominant.
Defending state champion Frontier Regional needed just 53 minutes to dismiss Lenox 25-12, 25-13, 25-6 in the quarterfinals of the Western Massachusetts Division 3 Girls Volleyball Tournament on Tuesday night at Goodnow Gymnasium.
The top-seeded Red Hawks (19-1) advanced to the semifinals against fifth-seeded Lee (17-4) on Thursday night at 6:30 at Frontier.
But first, MacDonald will have plenty to discuss today with his team at practice, a good deal of which will be dedicated to working on serving.
Frontier missed 14 serves overall and, had it not been for several big individual service runs, the match could have been a lot closer.
"Oh yeah, there will be plenty" of working on serving, MacDonald said. "When we serve well, the game is a lot easier. We did the same thing Monday night" in a scrimmage against Longmeadow. We're not this bad with our serving, (but) we need to get it working better."
As bad as Frontier was with its serving at times, they were spectacular on offense and had eighth-seeded Lenox (11-7) scrambling to try and return the Red Hawks blasts, mostly to no avail.
But give the Millionaires credit - they didn't back down early and even led the first game at three different junctures, as late as 8-7. But Frontier's offense suddenly flipped the proverbial switch and All-State hitter Cassidy Stankowski unloaded six powerful kills and Kate Harper added a well-placed tip during an 11-3 run to give the Hawks an 18-11 lead.
After an exchange points, Ali Durant took the service line at 19-12 and served for the final six points, which included two aces, another fantastic Harper tip and two Lenox errors to close out the opening set.
Neither team led by more than two points at the outset of the second set, and it was 9-9 when Courtney Parent's four service points put the Red Hawks up 13-9.
At 14-10, Millionaires freshman Makayla White served three points to close the gap to one, but Frontier's Marie Wheeler caught Lenox off-guard with a second-hit tip that fell in to make it 15-13 and put teammate Julia Wan on the service line. All Wan did from there was serve for the final 10 points of the set, the first and last points punctuated by Stankowski blasts that Lenox never had a chance to return.
Wan finished with four aces in the run, while Stankowski collected three kills.
Wan also served for six straight points in the third set to help Frontier build a 7-1 lead. When Lenox got the serve back, Kelsey Abramson registered two kills and a block on consecutive points to make to 10-2, and Wheeler served for eight straight points to extend the advantage to 16-3.
From there MacDonald emptied the bench and the Red Hawks finished off the match.
Tori Whitney had a kill and a block down the stretch, and Sarah Woodward closed out the match with an ace.
Stankowski led the Frontier offense with 19 kills and four aces, raising her season totals to 208 and 40, respectively.
Wan collected 16 service points and four aces, while Wheeler totaled nine assists and three aces.
