Mahopac volleyball coach Jay Melville said a mouthful just before the opening serve of Saturday’s Section 1 Class AA championship match between No. 5 Mahopac and the third-seeded Cornhuskers of Yorktown at the Westchester County Center.
“I have no idea how we got here, but I know I don’t want it to end today,” Melville said, echoing the thoughts of just about everyone from the Mahopac side.
But end it did, with the Wolf Pac showing signs of another possible upset in the first two, close sets only to watch their hopes fade as Yorktown took over in the third and fourth on the way to 3-1 victory and the Class AA title.
Yorktown ruled the first set, and Mahopac came back in the second for a 1-1 tie. But the Huskers came out of the gate on fire in the third, rolling to a commanding, 9-0 lead before the Pac managed to find a point.
It was a hole the Pac couldn’t climb out of on the way to a 25-17 loss.
And Yorktown smelled the finish line from the start of the fourth, again jumping to a strong start with four unanswered points, and keeping the pressure on, en route to a 25-15 title-clinching score.
After the Wolf Pac won that second set — a set in which they never trailed — Yorktown never fell behind, or was even tied, again. Melville said his team couldn’t find an answer once the Huskers got on a roll.
“Our passing went off,” Melville said. “They were serving good balls at us, and we just weren’t passing the ball to our setters in a place where we could actually run some offense at the net. And you can’t give a team like that chance after chance. You have to get the ball back. You have to be aggressive toward them.”
Melville said his team felt from the start of the season that the potential was there to reach the County Center, but making it happen wasn’t easy.
“We thought we had the ability to get here from the start of the season,” he said. “We knew it was going to be tough, but we believed. It’s a disappointing end, because they’re going to feel like they didn’t play their best toward the end, but you have to play the whole match. It seemed like after the second game, something was different… Whether it took too much energy out of us, or whatever it was, we didn’t play the same.”
Taylor Ann Vitiello had 15 kills for the Pac, Bella DeChico added eight, and Nadia Stepinac had four. DeChico and Lily Slizowski each had four aces. Slizowski added 16 assists; DeChico had 14.
Mahopac reached the final in unlikely fashion, knocking off No. 1 seed Horace Greeley, 3-2, the prior Wednesday in Chappaqua.
Greeley led two sets to one and was up 24-22 in the fourth before the Pac battled back to grab the set, 27-25. Mahopac rode the momentum to a 15-13 victory in a close fifth, sending the team to its first championship match in over 20 years. Mahopac hadn’t reached the semifinals since 2014 and has never won a sectional volleyball title.
“They just dug deep at the end of that game,” Melville said. “They didn’t want their season to end, so we started playing the kind of volleyball we’re capable of playing. We were within striking distance, and we played a couple of good points, and then we finished off the set. The end of the fourth, and the fifth, was the best I’ve seen them play.”
Vitiello gave the Pac 18 kills and 13 digs, while Olivia Hoyt added eight to go with 16 digs. DeChico had four aces and 25 assists. Slizowski had 12 assists.
The team that started 2-7 closed the season at 12-10. Pac senior captain Leona Ademi said it was a ride none of the players will forget.
“The whole run that got us there was really something special,” Ademi said. “But once we got there (to the County Center), I think maybe nerves got the best of us. We played our game, but not enough. Still, it was amazing to get there, we had a bad record early on, but then to get to that level was so surreal. It really meant the world to us.
“Late in that fourth set at Greeley, it all came down to heart,” Ademi added of the semifinal upset. “We were doing it for each other, and it was amazing to beat the top seed. Even Mahopac looked at us different, like we maybe could actually win it. We found meaning — that it’s not about playing for you; it’s about playing for the girl next to you.”
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