For the third straight season, the Frontier Regional girls volleyball team will face Case in the state tournament.
The six-time defending state champion Red Hawks (12-13) will face the Cardinals (24-2) in the Division 3 finals, Saturday at noon at Shrewsbury High School.
Two years ago, the Red Hawks defeated the Cardinals, 3-1, in the state championship, and last year, Frontier eliminated Case, 3-2, in the state semifinals.
The Red Hawks graduated their entire starting lineup and had another handful of bench players leave for prep schools after last season. That left the cupboard bare in terms of varsity experience for coach Sean MacDonald.
“We’ve never lost that much and had so little coming back,” MacDonald said. “We have no seniors and we’ve never been missing an entire class of players.”
The Red Hawks finished the regular season 7-13 and qualified for the tournament via of the 70-percent rule.
The Red Hawks then beat Mohawk, Athol, Mount Greylock, Lee and Millbury to reach the state finals. The victories over Greylock, Lee and Millbury came in five sets.
“I think this has been the most improbable run to the state finals,” MacDonald said. “Our 2006 championship was a little improbable because that team was young, too. But we didn’t totally wipe the slate clean and graduate everybody.”
Winning the five-setters has not been entirely surprising to MacDonald, whose team is 6-2 on the season in five-set matches.
“I’m really impressed with how well they have kept their heads together,” MacDonald said. “When Lee forced us to five games last weekend, I wasn’t too happy but the girls were like, ‘Hey, we know how to win a fifth set. We’ve got this.’ If we can get into a fifth set with Case, I like our chances. We are not going to run out of gas, and we are battle-tested. The longer the match goes, I feel like that benefits us.”
Case has the ability to get kills from all over the court. Unlike Frontier, whose outside hitters generate most of the kills, Case is led by its two middle hitters, while the two outside hitters are just behind. Lauren Davidson and Mikayla Bushell have 196 and 157 kills, respectively, as middle hitters, while outside hitters Hailey Armbug and Madison Rowland have 144 and 133, respectively.
“We can’t really focus on one person because they are going to spread the ball around a lot,” MacDonald said.
Frontier is gunning for its ninth state championship and seventh in a row. The Red Hawks are 8-1 in state championship matches. The last team to beat Frontier in the postseason was Case, which won in the 2009 semifinals in 2009.