Volleyball: Granby girls force playoff; Maury boys take title

The Granby girls volleyball team celebrate their five-match victory over Maury that forced a playoff for the Eastern District regular-season title. (Joy Lewis / The Virginian-Pilot)

By John Streit
The Virginian-Pilot

The formula was simple for the undefeated boys and girls volleyball teams of Maury on Monday: wins over Granby would bring home Eastern District titles to Bacalis Baker Court.

For Granby’s teams, who each had one district loss to, winning on the Commodores’ court would be more than just revenge: it would equalize the district standings and force one-game, winner-take-all playoffs for the district’s regular season championship.

High enough stakes for you?

The girls match would live up to this monumental billing – the boys, not so much.

The Granby girls kept their championship hopes alive by defeating Maury 25-23, 25-20, 20-25, 18-25 and 15-2. The one-game playoff is set for 4 p.m. Wednesday at Granby.

Maury’s boys held the chalk in their match with Granby, winning 3-1 by scores of 25-13, 25-27, 25-16 and 25-12 in a contest that wasn’t as close as the four-game match would indicate.

The girls’ game was a textbook seesaw thriller – that is until the decisive game five, where Granby (16-3, 13-1 Eastern District) put on one of its most dominant performances of the season.

After jumping out to a quick 2-0 lead on the shoulders of Jamecia Alston, who finished the match with 20 kills, Granby’s momentum was sapped by the Commodores in games three and four.

Granby busted out to a 7-2 lead in game three, but Maury (15-3, 13-1) engineered a 12-0 run which put the game well out of Granby’s reach. That go-ahead scoring stretch was highlighted three consecutive service aces by Frances King and several explosive kills from Lala Deal, who led Maury with 16.

Maury kept up that pace in game four, putting together runs of 4-0 and 10-4 to cruise to the equalizing win.

“They were starting to triple block, so (coach Drew Stephenson) told us to set outside some to they could calm down and hit middle again,” Deal said, “After that we were hyped, we were ready.”

But then Granby decided enough was enough.

The Comets jumped out to a 5-1 lead aided by four Maury errors. From there, Alston and company rode a 10-1 surge which they’re hoping won’t end until well after Wednesday.

“I guess when they were beating us 11-3 (in game four), we felt like it was already over,” Alston said. “But coach (Tim Maynard) just told us we need to win, and if we want it, we’ll be the champions no matter what.”

But for Maury’s boys, who dominated the Eastern District from wire-to-wire, their match’s results were much less brazen, and a lot more predictable.

Led by the evenly-keeled attack of Ben Klein, Patrick Kimidy, Will Grimes and Joey Link, who totaled 15, 12, 10 and 10 kills, respectively, Maury (18-0, 14-0) rolled to a 25-13 win in game one and looked to make quick work of the Comets (15-5, 12-2).

But mistakes by the Commodores ensured the match would not be a sweep as Maury spotted Granby eight of its first 16 points on errors.

Despite battling back through two match points to tie it at 24, two more late errors saw Granby take the game 27-25.

But Maury settled back into the groove it established in game one as it cruised to easy wins in games four and five to close out its unblemished district run.

“We made a few errors and they really seemed to throw us off, we lost a lot of momentum,” Klein said. “But we came right back in the third game.”

Blake Sheldon and John Eagle each had eight aces for Granby and came up with seven and six kills, respectively. See a Photo Gallery of the Granby-Maury girls match.