DERRY, NH – It may have been the Bedford High School girls volleyball team’s strongest challenge in the last five years and it came in the battle for the Bulldogs’ 100th-consecutive victory.
Competing Thursday night in the Division-I semifinals, hosted at Pinkerton Academy in Derry, Bedford faced off against upstart Bishop Guertin High School, and though the Bulldogs ultimately won, 3-2, BG didn’t make it easy.
“Bedford has won I don’t know how many years in a row, so we thought, ‘why not us,'” said Guertin senior captain Akira Coravos. “Because somebody had to do it.”
Indeed, that mentality was apparent from the start as the high-flying Cardinals came out of the gate, well, flying.
Using their athleticism to counter Bulldogs’ size, the Cardinals earned a 25-19 win in a never-in-doubt first set.
“I told them, if we were going to do it, it’s going to be that first set that matters,” said BG head coach Kyle Clement. “To set the tone that first set was huge, to put them on their heels in an uncomfortable spot that they haven’t been in.”
The Bulldogs showed their championship pedigree in coming back to edge BG in the second set, 25-23, and then seemingly took control of the contest with a 25-18 victory in the third set.
The Cardinals, however, proved just as resilient and bounced back with a 25-13 triumph in the fourth set and then carried that momentum into the fifth and final set.
Though they started that set just as strong as they finished the fourth, taking an early 5-2 lead, the Bulldogs clamped down, tied the set at five and after a few back-and-forth points, took the lead for good with their eighth point and then pulled away to take the set, 15-10, and in doing so earned their 100th-straight victory and a fifth-straight championship game appearance.
“To push a team that hasn’t lost in five years that far, they have nothing to be ashamed of,” said Clement of his players’ effort Thursday.
Bedford’s first-year head coach Naomi Rascati, who found similar success at the high school level in Connecticut before taking the reins for the Bulldogs, said her players found composure in going back to fundamentals while “staying tough and playing strong.”
“I tell them to stay committed to each other. I think attitude is a huge part of the volleyball game, and mentality is a huge part of the game, and I think that’s what kind of differentiates us from some other teams,” she said. “Just that it’s OK to make a mistake. It’s a game of mistakes, but how do you recover from those mistakes and how do you keep moving forward?”
And onward the Bulldogs move. They’ll take aim at their sixth-straight championship Saturday at Pinkerton when they take on the tournament hosts at 10 a.m.
As for the Cardinals, they walked out of the gymnasium Thursday with their heads held high.
“BG hasn’t been this far in a really long time, and I think we gave Bedford a really good run for their money, even though we didn’t get the result we wanted,” said Coravos.
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