Stories

Western edges out Monticello

Maybe Western Albemarle and Fluvanna County volleyball. Or William Monroe and Madison County in any sport.

There just aren’t many rivalries in Central Virginia female athletics that produce the drama, intensity or quality matchups like when Western Albemarle and Monticello, who both almost always win their other district matches handily, clash on the court. Not over the last four years. There just hasn’t been much, if anything, like it.

In the latest chapter Tuesday evening, Western Albemarle won a nearly four-hour marathon match, edging the Mustangs 5-4 by winning No. 1 doubles in the last pairing of the night.

“We faced a lot of challenges today,” said Western coach Ellen Markowitz. “This is their court, they’re super pumped, they had the revenge factor (Western beat Monticello earlier in the year) and they had a lot of fans here. We just tried to keep our composure and we love our doubles.”

In singles play, Monticello’s Lizzy Gaffney came out on a mission. Earlier in the year, Western’s No. 1 Emily Kochard handed Gaffney her lone career defeat in Jefferson District singles play. It was early in the season and Gaffney was coming off a severe stretch of sickness that kept her out of practice for at least the first week of the season.

Gaffney avenged the loss, rolling 10-0 against Kochard, who’s on the mend herself after an injury has kept her out of a string of matches recently.

Kassie Tulenko, a freshman, won 10-1 at No. 2 single to help the Mustangs jump out to a 2-0 lead, but after that things got a little wild.

Cari Bland, who’s played a little bit of No. 1 for the Warriors with Kochard out, rallied to win at No. 3 singles, keeping Western’s hopes of a 3-3 split in singles alive.

“I just stayed more consistent than I was before and focused more,” Bland said.

Megan Wright and Alison Masselli then followed with wins that made the split a reality. Hanna Lamb nearly rallied to give the Warriors a win at No.6, but Monticello’s Jackie Mallon held on in for an 11-10 win in a 7-5 tiebreaker.

That set the table for an incredibly tense, contentious doubles segment and it didn’t take long for the intensity to boil over. A few calls — in high school tennis players call their own outs, occasionally leaving room for disagreement between opposing players — and the ensuing reaction led to Monticello placing an administrator, athletic director Fitzgerald Barnes, on the court next to No. 1 doubles to calm everyone’s nerves.

“(Our girls) fought every single point and I couldn’t have been more proud of them,” said Monticello coach Lea Doise. “It is always like this, it always comes down to this last match.”

From there everything went smoothly as the squads split the other two doubles matches leaving the No. 1 doubles match as the decisive court.

Monticello’s tandem of Kelsey Combs and Gaffney jumped out to a 6-3 lead over Western’s pairing of Kochard and Bland, but the Western group bounced back and scratched out a 10-8, match-clinching victory. The win allowed the Warriors to stay unbeaten in Jefferson District play and wrapped up the regular season district title with a two-match advantage over the Mustangs.

Monticello could get a chance to avenge the loss in next week’s Jefferson District tournament if the two squads meet in the finals.

Comments

comments