Girls volleyball: Montini backs off, falls in sectional final

Therese Noonan and the Montini girls volleyball team played the first set of the Class 3A sectional title game with their foot firmly on the gas pedal.

"We came into this game really ready to play and really knowing what we were going for," Noonan said.

The second and third sets, however, were a different story.

"We just kind of let up a little bit," Noonan said.

And it showed.

Resurrection rallied to beat Montini 14-25, 25-21, 25-22 to claim the sectional title and advance to Friday's IC Catholic supersectional.

It was easy to see why the Broncos (21-11) had so much confidence after the first set.

Montini went on a 7-2 run midway through the first set that opened up a 14-7 lead.

"The first set, we had all the momentum," senior Annie Marie Olszowka said. "We had our cheering, we had everything."

Chief among that was their serving and hitting.

Noonan, a sophomore who stepped in for the injured Joslyn Boyer, connected throughout the first set with hitters Michelle Glover, Alexandra Quaglia and Caitlyn Meeks.

"We've been talking about that all season," Montini coach Steve Dowjotas said. "If we pass the ball, we serve the ball, nobody's going to stop our middles, plain and simple."

And it showed in an 11-point victory in the set.

"We knew that we were going to come out and get it because we were so focused on winning that game," Olszowka said. "We wanted it so bad. We provided in the first game."

Then came that second set and Resurrection.

Both teams battled back and forth to a 9-9 tie in the set.

Then the Bandits broke the set wide open. Resurrection rattled off eight straight points and never looked back in the set.

"We were ready to go, we were ready to be in it, but then we let them get a little bit of a run," Noonan said. "We just couldn't come back from that. They're a good team, they're not just going to fall over and die for us, we needed to continue working that whole set and they just got a little bit of a run and we couldn't get back in it."

That set shook the Broncos.

"When they came back firing, ready to go, they came back with all that confidence on their side, it was kind of like a blow to the stomach," Noonan said. "We were like, 'Oh, we have to start playing, we have to start playing real volleyball."

But where the Broncos eased off the pedal, the Bandits kept flooring it.

Resurrection scored 6 straight points early in the third set to race out to a 9-3 lead.

"They had the momentum on their side on the stands and on their court and they just took over," Olszowka said.

Montini tried to claw its way back but could never cut the deficit to fewer than 2 points, including a 24-22 deficit.

"We knew they had some good servers, we knew they had some good hitters, we knew they were a good team, so we ready for that," Noonan said. "But especially after that first game, after they let us win by so much, it was like, it was still kind of a shock, even though we knew they were good."