SOUTH DEERFIELD — Sean MacDonald didn’t like what he was seeing and wisely called a timeout after the Frontier Regional girls volleyball team fell into an early hole against Turners Falls.
The Red Hawks regrouped and begin playing like a 12-time Western Massachusetts champion. Frontier went on to win the first game en route to a 3-0 sweep Wednesday night in the Division 3 semifinals at Goodnow Gymnasium.
The Red Hawks trailed 10-5 at the timeout, but outscored Turners 20-8 to win the first set 25-18. They closed out the win 25-8, 25-10.
“Coach told us to remember who we are,” said senior captain Selayna Bathurst, who had three kills, four aces and six digs. “We had to hold the rope and we never gave it. We had so much energy, we came back hard.”
MacDonald knows his team well enough to be confident they would heed his message.
“I just said to be us and that we didn’t need to do anything superhuman,” he said. “I really didn’t think we were playing like us. Our passing was off, there were some service errors, so we just needed to take a deep breath and settle down.”
Top-seeded Frontier (14-6) advanced to Saturday’s sectional final against No. 2 Lee (19-1).
“Being the first seed, there’s a lot of pressure on us to win, but we’re taking it with a grain of salt,” Bathurst said. “We’re excited and the pressure just makes us play better.”
Frontier was led by Lauren Davenport. The junior captain was quite a force with 14 kills.
Junior Ashley Telega had a .714 hitting percentage, along with 11 kills. Senior captain Ella Deane dished out 36 assists with five aces and 12 digs, while junior Haley Oloski finished with eight kills.
“We tried to get off the emotional roller coaster and our kids did a nice job,” MacDonald said. “We played with a lot of energy and played well defensively.”
Frontier built on its Set 1 momentum and never let up. The Red Hawks vaulted to a 6-0 lead in the middle set and never looked back.
“We had so much energy, there was like an unshakeable confidence,” Bathurst said.
Turners Falls (18-4) never recovered from that opening game. It let Frontier dictate the tempo and had several unforced errors that turned into points for the Red Hawks.
“We came out with a lot of energy, but then it just dropped and we couldn’t hang,” Turners Falls coach Kelly Liimatainen said. “They’re a great team.”
That made the daunting task of trying to dethrone the perennial champions on their home court that much more difficult.
Davenport helped fuel the early comeback with several kills as Frontier inched back from that deficit. She has a team-leading 296 kills this season.
The Red Hawks seemed like they could sense the victory in the third set. They jumped out to a commanding 10-4 lead and were in total control.
The key to the sweep was avoiding the long volleys that took place during the early portion of the opening set. Most of those volleys resulted in points for Turners Falls until the Red Hawks got their game in full gear.
They regrouped and played like a cohesive unit with crisp passing setting up kills and forcing errors.