Monday, November 23, 2015

By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director

Old Tappan finished off its perfect season with a 26-24, 25-18 sweep of four-time defending champion IHA on Sunday in the Tournament of Champions final at William Paterson.

WAYNE – Having lost a set for just the third time all season on Saturday in the semifinals of the Tournament of Champions, the Northern Valley/Old Tappan volleyball team might just have gotten that little reminder it needed that no match is over until the scoreboard says it is. The Golden Knights breezed through the first set against River Dell before losing the second and had to fight their way through the third to reach Sunday’s final match against four-time defending champion IHA.

“That lost set to River Dell really made us realize that you can’t take any point for granted,” said Old Tappan senior outside hitter Natalie Alechko. “We had to force [IHA] to earn all of their points and not give any away. We had to focus point by point and not pay attention to the score.”

Old Tappan, with a 25-0 record heading into the T of C final, has been unbeatable all season anyway. A focused Old Tappan limiting unforced errors, challenging everything at the net and playing its usual airtight defense, is dominating.

Old Tappan scored the final two points of the first set to take the lead and then led wire to wire in Set 2 to sweep IHA, 26-24, 25-18, and win its first Tournament of Champions title since 2010. The Golden Knights finished off their perfect season with a 26-0 record and lost just three sets all year long.

“I think that there are always lessons you can teach as a coach, but it is up to the kids the kids to learn them, to embrace them and grow from them and these kids did. They bought in, they realized that nothing was going to be handed to them and hard work was the only answer,” said Old Tappan head coach Melissa Landeck. “One of the great characteristics of this team to put it in a volleyball situation is that when we are in a game and up by 10 points or 15 points, these kids go as hard for a ball as they would if it was tied. They don’t give up anything and that is the mindset this team has, that grinding mentality.”

Senior Anabel Reyes and IHA finished the season with a 35-7 record.

The first set was tight as there were five ties through the first 22 points of the match before Old Tappan went on a 7-2 run to open up some breathing room. Alechko slammed one off the block and Kirsten Kaiser added a kill from the middle to give the Knights an 18-13 lead. IHA rallied with a 4-1 run behind the serve of Lisa Ferioli. Casey King had a block and hit one down the line and Caitlyn Floyd chopped a dink over for the point that got the Blue Eagles back to within 18-17.

It looked like Old Tappan had pulled away for good when Brittany Barry hit a cross-court changeup that dropped to make it 22-19 and then Kelly Brogan won a joust at the net to give the Knights their first game point at 24-22. But IHA, with four seniors that have known nothing but T of C success in their high school careers, fought back again. Floyd, the senior setter, set up King, the senior hitter, for a middle kill and an Old Tappan attack error knotted the opening set at 24.

Needing to turn the momentum one last time, Old Tappan’s senior setter/hitter combo of Brogan and Alechko knew the drill. Alechko hit a cross-court boomer and that was followed by Julia Passante’s stuff block that gave the Knights the game and the 1-0 lead.

Passante, a 6-foot-2 sophomore, and Kaiser, a 6-foot-3 junior, were difference makers all match long as their length at the net left IHA looking for alternate angles rather than the direct route.

“They have some many good hitters and they are so diverse, so even if we just got a touch and slowed the ball down a little, I think that was a big help for our defense,” said Passante. “That is a huge part of what we try to do and it definitely helped us out today.”

The second set was not as close. Brogan took a kill of opportunity on the first ball to kick off a 5-0 game-opening run for the Knights. The lead was still five at 11-6 before Floyd got a tip to fall and the Blue Eagles were still with four at 12-8 after a block by Gianna D’Onofrio. A middle kill by Alechko, a rip off the fingertips of the block by Passante and an Alechko ace put Old Tappan up 17-11 and forced an IHA timeout.

Senior setter Kelly Brogan helped lead Old Tappan to wins in 52 of the 55 sets its played this season.

The Blue Eagles rallied to get as close as 18-16, but then Kaiser circled in behind a Brogan for a middle kill and Maya Ilovsky then rattled one through the block to make 20-16. Fittingly, Alechko, probably the front-runner for any kind of Player of the Year awards, closed out the match and the season with the last of her team-high 8 kills.

The loss ended IHA’s four-year run as T of C champion, but it is hard to classify this season as disappointing for the Blue Eagles, who won Non-Public State title, a league title and made it to the finals of both the Bergen County Tournament and the Tournament of Champions and finished with a 35-7 record.

“We got to the finals and there were a lot of other good teams that didn’t do that. I want them to focus on what we did accomplish this year,” said IHA head coach Maria Nolan. “We won our conference, we kept our home match winning streak intact, we won a state title and we were one of the last two teams left standing.”

Old Tappan is the last team left standing as it added the T of C championship trophy to the league, county, state sectional and Group 3 state title trophies it had already piled up in its perfect season.

“It just feels so good because it is an amazing way to go out. We have worked so hard, this group of seniors, over the past four years to get to this point and it is great to finally achieve this goal,” said Brogan, who finishing with 18 assists, 5 digs, 3 kills and a block in her final high school match. “I am sad that this season is over. I wish we could go on like this forever because we have a great team and we all love each other so much.”

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