WHITEMARSH — Last season, the Spring-Ford girls volleyball team went to the state playoffs for the first time in program history. Thursday night, the Rams secured their second trip.
No. 12 Spring-Ford defeated No. 6 Plymouth Whitemarsh, 3-1 (25-19, 25-17, 13-25, 25-16), in the District 1-4A fifth-place game at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School to clinch a spot in the PIAA-4A state playoffs.
“We’re building a pretty good program,” Spring-Ford coach George Fuller said. “Right now, some of these players, I don’t think they understand what something like this means, so they’re still trying to process that. It’s a tremendous accomplishment for us just considering all the challenges we’ve had both on and off the court so far this season.”
“It’s really special for us,” Spring-Ford’s Lauren Angelucci said. “It’s only our second time in school history that we’ve ever made it to states. It’s a big accomplishment on our part. It’s definitely exciting.”
The Rams will face District 1 champion Unionville in the first round of states Tuesday.
Spring-Ford (18-7) jumped out early in the first set. After splitting the first 10 points, the Rams rattled off a 14-2 run to take a 19-8 lead. PW battled back with 12 of the next 16 to get within 23-19, but Elle Sossong and Angelucci had back-to-back kills to put S-F up, 1-0, with a 25-19 win.
It was more of the same in the second set. After leading 8-6, Spring-Ford expanded its advantage to 13-6, 16-8 and 21-11. PW trimmed its deficit to seven, 23-16, but Angelucci had a strong kill and Lila Olsen used a finesse shot to close things out, 25-17, for a 2-0 lead.
The third set was all Colonials. PW held its first lead of the match at 2-1 and, after a 4-4 tie, rattled of seven straight points to pull ahead, 11-4. Back-to-back aces from Chloe Esslinger made it 18-9 and the advantage continued to grow through the end of the set. They closed it out, 25-13, to make it a 2-1 match.
The fourth set was back-and-forth early. The most competitive point of the night included a pair of impressive digs from each side before PW’s Amanda Busk ended things with a kill to give the Colonials a 6-3 edge with a strong home crowd behind them. The Rams responded to the hostile environment with three straight points to tie things up, 6-6, and slowly built an 18-14 advantage. Spring-Ford scored five straight points – including a Sossong ace – and eventually closed things out with a Morgan Pupek kill. The 25-16 fourth set secured a 3-1 win.
“The louder they get, the louder we get,” Angelucci said of the opposing student section. “We just used their energy to make us play stronger and more together.”
“When that student section started making noise you could see it affect us a little bit,” Fuller said. “They say it doesn’t affect them, but you can tell that it is. I said we’ve got to focus on the court and on the bench and on what we can control. We had a pretty good cheering section as well and I said just let them deal with that… The way to shut them up is to get out there and execute.”
Plymouth Whitemarsh’s season ends with the loss. The Colonials finish the season with a 19-4 record.
“I feel like we left a lot on the court tonight,” PW coach Dave Stewart said. “We talk about it all the time. If you play your best and a team comes in and beats you, then you can say a better team beat you. (Spring-Ford) is a fantastic team, but I feel like there were just things where we gave them a few too many runs and then instead of controlling pace of play we were allowing them to control the pace of play. In some ways it’s just unfortunate because you saw in set three how we were able to control the pace of play and that changed the outcome of that set. Frustrating, but also very, very proud of the effort that the kids had all season long.”
Stewart was happy with the team’s growth over the course of the season. They suffered early losses against Abington and Upper Dublin, but avenged both losses later in the regular season and again in the district playoffs.
While PW had a younger team this season, Stewart pointed to seniors Busk, a College of Charleston commit, and Chloe Mamrosch, a Catholic University commit, as impact players that will be missed.
“(Busk) led the team in kills and was second in blocks,” Stewart said. “She played super, super big for us. If you have a dominant outside hitter and you get them the ball and they put the ball down – that’s a huge thing. She’s one of those players you see once in a while, they come through and you really enjoy it when they’re here. She came in as a freshman and she didn’t really know the game that well and you could see her progress over the years. It’s just awesome to see what she’s turning into and I know that she’es only going to continue to get better as she goes into her college years.”
