Top-Seeded IHA Reaches Final 4 in Volleyball

OLD TAPPAN – If anything was obvious from the two quarterfinal games played on Tuesday in the Bergen County Volleyball Tournament it was that the title is really up for grabs. Each of the four teams that took the floor at Northern Valley/Old Tappan High School had some type of stumbling block laid in front of it whether it was injury, inexperience, past history or a combination of all three.

Ramapo, the No. 5 seed which made it to the final last season, has just one starter back from that team and she, senior Kasey Woetzel, did not even play due to an ankle injury. Mahwah, the No. 4 seed, had never made it past the quarterfinal round. Pascack Valley, the No. 9 seed that barely snuck by No. 8 Northern Highlands in the Round of 16, has just one senior in its rotation and top-seeded IHA is without Nia Reed, the sophomore and one of the best hitters in all of New Jersey, for the rest of the season because of a wrist injury. It made for an interesting night.

After Mahwah was able to hold off Ramapo to earn its first ever trip to the Final 4, IHA tried to get there one year after losing in a quarterfinal upset at the hands of Northern Valley/Demarest. IHA looked dominant at times and vulnerable at others but will take the result, a 25-13, 22-25, 25-13 victory that sends it into the semifinals where it will face Mahwah on Friday night.

“We have to clean some stuff up, but the way we played in the first and third set will help towards that goal, but we can't have letdowns like we did in the second set,” said IHA co-head coach Mike DeCastro. “Coming into this match tonight what happened last year might have been on our minds a little bit, but we made sure we got the job done and we will not be taking the next round lightly either.”

IHA got out of the gates quickly behind the serve of junior libero Michelle Cruz, who rattled off the first five points of the match and the Blue Eagles never trailed on the way to the opening set win. IHA looked confident at the start with Corina Dypko earned the first point of the night with a cross-court kill, while the young Indians might have had a case of the jitters at the start of the biggest match they have played to date. Trailing 8-4, Pascack Valley put a serve into the net, had a tip rejected by the tape, sent a free ball over the back line and followed those miscues with two straight attack errors in a negative 5-0 that put IHA in control for good.

Dypko again went cross-court to give IHA a 20-9 lead, a Cruz ace put the Eagles us 23-10 and a PV serve that landed wide left ended a rough first game for the ninth-seeded Indians.

“I think we kind of stood back and were watching too much early on. We talked about that not being what we wanted to,” said PV head coach Andrew Lewis. “We wanted to be aggressive, but that didn't happen in the beginning.”

But it did in Game 2 as PV found its groove and scored four of the first five points and was up 7-3 when Kim Yoo served an ace. IHA finally caught up at 9-9 and the set was also tied at 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18 and 22. IHA's only lead came at 18-17 when Jennifer Pagano finished off a long rally by hitting the back line with a hard swing, but an attack error with the game tied at 22 gave Pascack Valley the lead for good. Kaitlin MacIver, PV's setter and only senior starter, tipped home a winner to make it 24-22 and an IHA error one point later squared the match at 1 apiece.

“Their hitters did really well with keeping the ball in the court during the second game and we just couldn't get on a run,” said Cruz, who was all over the court defensively as she finished with a match-high 18 digs. “A lot of the people on our team had the experience of what happened last year when we lost in the quarterfinals and we knew we had to pull it together. We had to go after every ball and limit our mistakes because those all add up when you look at the final score. In the third game we just knew we had to concentrate and try to win every point.”

With Cruz serving to start Game 3, IHA got off to the confidence building start it needed. Pagano got a favorable roll over the tape for the first point, Jessica Cervini then banged one off the block to put the Eagles up 2-0 and they rolled from there. The decisive run was a 4-0 spurt on Cervini's serve that took IHA from up 4-2 to up 8-2. Pascack Valley (11-8) got as close as 11-8, but Ashley Agnello hit a BB down the pipe to to restore a four-point advantage.

Larysa Iwaskiw found a way through a two-player block to get IHA to a 20-11 lead and two straight services winners by Cervini moved the Eagles to game point at 24-11. When PV's final serve went outside the line on the left, IHA (24-1) was off to the semifinals.

Cruz led the way for the Eagles with 11 service points and an ace to go along with her 18 kills. Senior setter Amanda Garabino finished with a match-high 32 assists to go along with 9 service points and one ace and Pagano did most of her damage at the net with team highs in kills (12) and blocks (3).

“[Cruz] was consistent and level-headed throughout the whole match, Jen Pagano stepped up at the end there with her offense and her blocking and Jen [Cervini] was great with her serves at the end,” said DeCastro, whose team will play the second of the two double header matches slated for Friday at Old Tappan. “Some people played well in spurts, Michelle played well throughout and we had other people step up when we needed them too.”

Yoo, a junior outside hitter, led Pascack Valley with 8 kills, MacIver finished with 15 assists and junior libero Chelsea Macchione had 12 digs for the Indians, who could find plenty of positives in taking the No. 1 ranked team in the state to three games and doing it on the biggest of stages.

“We kept on fighting all the way through and I am happy. I did have two freshmen [Jenny Schneider and Olivia Beattie] out there for a significant amount of time, Kim Yoo hit some great balls, we just needed to block a little better because they hit very well,” said Lewis. “It was great to get here playing just one senior, but we have a lot of things we still want to accomplish. This was a good run, but our season is not over yet.”

For more photos from the game, click here.