Granby Volleyball the Best Kept Secret in the Valley

My vote for the best kept secret in Farmington Valley high school sports is the girls volleyball team.

Indeed, though just in their third year on the varsity level, the Bears are 7-7 and are poised to make the state tournament for the second consecutive season.

To get an idea of how far Granby has come so quickly, consider the tough 3-2 (25-17, 27-25, 16-25, 16-25, 13-15) loss the Bears had at the hands of Nonnewaug at home on Monday evening.

Gone are the days of talking about character-building losses, gaining valuable experience and player development.

All of that has been replaced with discussions on how shifts in-game tactics allowed a 2-0 lead slip away to a very good Chiefs team, which won three straight games to improve to 10-3 on the year.

“The first couple of games, we ran a lot of plays and we went for the confusion,” Granby head coach Dave Sprowson said. “We kind of took a step back a little in the third and fourth games, and got away from the confusion and tried to go toe to toe more. That obviously led to us having to go multiple games and go into a fifth game.

“The fifth game I was generally happy. We didn’t pull out the win from it, but the level of play tonight was exactly what we were going for and it was how we wanted to start pushing ourselves going toward states.”

The Bears were led by junior middle hitter Lauren Holt, who had 12 kills, four aces and an astounding nine blocks on the day.

Setters Dana Nurge (13 assists) and Megan Nilson also had great games, according to Sprowson.

It was a team effort that gave Nonnewaug, led by Madison Losure (nine kills, two aces, nine digs and two assists) and Meryl Ramsey (13 kills, nine digs, four aces), all it could handle.

Losure, a junior who is being recruited to play in college at the Division I level, essentially took the match over in the the last three games to lead the Chiefs to victory.

“I consider us very fortunate to leave here with a victory,” Chiefs head coach Fran Gelzinis said. “That’s a very good team over there.”

The Bears’ success at the varsity level is all the more impressive considering that the program does not benefit from a true feeder program at the middle school, YMCA or rec-league levels.

So most, if not all, of the girls volleyball players picked up the game their freshman years of high school.

But what the team lacks in experience coming in, it makes up with hard work and commitment.

Indeed, Sprowson lives over an hour away from Granby and teaches at Lewis Mills High School in Burlington, yet there he in the high school gyme before every practice and game, exhorting his charges.

It’s a commitment that has Granby just one victory away from qualifying for the state tournament - teams need eight wins to earn a berth - with four games (Bolton, Avon, Ellington and Suffield) left on the schedule.

The Bears next match is against Suffield on Wednesday on the road at 5:30 p.m.