WILLIAMSTOWN — Sean MacDonald only had one thing to say to his team Wednesday night: “Remember who we are.”
A simple message, but one the Frontier Regional girls volleyball team could not overlook.
With its streak of six-straight state championships and 11-straight Western Massachusetts titles teetering on the brink, the Red Hawks remembered their championship credentials to pull out a 3-2 win over Mount Greylock in the Western Mass. Division 3 semifinals.
Sixth-seeded Frontier (10-11) will face No. 1 Lee (20-2) at 4 p.m. Saturday at Holyoke Community College in the championship.
“I don’t know if they surprised me, but they impressed me,” MacDonald said of his Red Hawks. “With the youth that we have, we don’t have a senior on the roster, these girls have been to these games, but this is the first time they’ve been on the court for these games.
“I’m really impressed with them being able to keep their composure.”
Frontier won by set scores of 27-25, 16-25, 20-25, 25-20 and 16-14.
The No. 2 Mounties (17-3) put up a fight throughout as they looked to be the team to knock off the champs.
“My saying this playoff season is ‘it’s just us and them,’” Frontier’s Selayna Bathurst said. “The crowd on the sideline can add a lot of extra pressure, but mental toughness was a huge part of that game and I have so much faith in every single person on my team. We knew we had our backs, I didn’t doubt our team for a second. I knew we could do it.”
The fourth and fifth sets was nail-biting. After the Red Hawks rallied from a 7-1 hole to win the first set, the Mounties responded with a dominant second set and then Jenna Benzinger tapped a ball over the net that Frontier couldn’t dig out to decide the third set.
Frontier then extracted its revenge.
Working up to a 13-9 lead in the fourth set, Greylock pulled a point back to make it 13-10. Frontier, though, didn’t break with its season on the line. Over the final 22 points of the set, the Red Hawks built up a lead time and again to keep the Mounties from getting over the hump. When the Mounties sent a shot long at 24-20, the Red Hawks erupted.
“We have to clean up some errors,” MacDonald said of his message when the team trailed 2-1. “They’ve got a big gun (in Benzinger), she’s going to score points, and we just have to control things that we can control.
“We try to make things hard for her, try to put the ball in a spot where it’s not as easy for her to see it come to the setter, just disrupt her. You’re never going to stop her. If we can clean up our stuff, we are going to be right in this.”
In the fifth set, Greylock raced out to a 4-1 lead when Carly Munzer dug out a ball and dropped it between the Frontier defense. That was as close as the Mounties got to winning the match.
Frontier took the next point, then used a service run by Lauren Davenport to build a 6-4 lead. Frontier went to match point at 14-11 on a kill by Davenport, but Greylock mounted one last charge with an ace by Munzer and a long hit by Frontier to tie 14-14.
Frontier went back up a point and got service back, then finished the game off with Davenport holding serve.
“I thought it was pretty even all the way through,” Greylock coach John Albano said. “We just made some errors when we shouldn’t have. But so did they. It just went their way, they are a great team.”
Bathurst finished with 17 kills, 15 digs and seven aces. Ella Deane had 44 assists and five kills, while Davenport finished with 15 kills and 17 digs.
For Greylock, Benzinger had 15 kills and two aces. Dagny Albano had five aces, 29 assists and two kills. Autumn Delorey finished with eight kills and Serena Chow had six kills and six digs.
Lee dispatched Lenox 3-0 in the other semifinal on Wednesday. Lee defeated Frontier 3-2 earlier this season in Lee.
“I’m so excited,” Deane said. “Lee is like our biggest rivalry. We lost to them in a close game, and we are really hyped to have that same rivalry at HCC — which is one of our favorite places to play.”