Mercy High had revenge on their minds when they traveled to Maryvale Prep for an IAAM B Conference volleyball semifinal Thursday. In the previous meeting in early October, the Lions handed the Magic 3-1 loss.
Morgan Jenkins made sure Mercy left Brooklandville empty handed as Maryvale advanced to the championship round with a 3-1 victory.
Jenkins had 17 kills, eight digs and two blocks for Maryvale, which will take on John Carroll for the title Saturday at 5 p.m. at Roland Park Country School. Maryvale middle blocker Ashleigh Stallings had 13 kills and a two blocks while teammate Colleen Scobie had 20 digs.
“Coming into today’s game I told my girls that we had to mental tough,” said Maryvale second-year coach Emily Johnson. “We have the athleticism and girls who love the game, and today we came in with the mind set that in the playoffs everyone record is 0-0 and we just focused and worked extra hard in practice.”
“Everything just clicked, we knew what their tendencies were and we just executed well,” said Jenkins, whose team committed only 15 attack errors to 22.
After a couple of early attack errors, Maryvale righted the ship and went on a 7-0 run to surge to victory in game one. Jenkins hammered in four kills for the Lions during the run.
The Magic overcame a quick 4-0 deficit in game two as a kill by Cait McKay gave the visitors a 8-7 lead. Mercy boosted the lead to 19-14 after block kills from Ally Shuth and Kelly Schwartz to 19-14 and closed out the set.
“My girls find this fire in them and my entire season has gone like this,” said Mercy coach Kelli Mckee-Hurley. “It’s been a total roaster, they get motivated because they know how good they are.”
In a third set that featured five ties and six lead changes, Maryvale broke a 10-10 tie with a Stallings kill, starting a 7-0 run. Setter Kellee Furno handled the Maryvale offense as she dealt out six off her 23 assists to foster the Lion run.
Maryvale delivered the knockout blow in the fourth set. Koch served two service aces while Stallings and Jenkins each had three kills.
“They [Mercy] are really good team but we pulled through,” said Sarah Koch, who had 10 kills and three blocks for Maryvale. “I think coming together is the really important part, we all worked really hard and pushed through on defense and offense.”
“I think my girls left everything had out on the court,” said Mckee-Hurley. “They have no regrets, they played with every ounce of their bodies and they left it all out on the court. I couldn’t have asked for anything more from any of them.”
It’s down one final game for Maryvale, which will attempt to stop John Carroll’s repeat bid. The Patriots, who defeated AACS in Thursday’s other semifinal, swept the Lions (3-0 and 3-1) in the regular season.
“Statistically the odds are for us, we are really going to work hard and I think we can beat them,” said Koch.
“Last year we lost to John Carroll in the quarterfinals and this year we face them in championship so it is a rivalry game for us,” said Johnson. “We need to play ten times better than we did tonight against John Carroll so we can bring the trophy back to Maryvale.”
In it’s semifinal, John Carroll saw Taylor Schaer and Jenny Hottle combine for 12 kills, while Nicole Wagner had four kills and three aces. In addition, Briana Lockhart had 15 assists in the 25-10, 25-10, 25-20 victory.
