On Saturday afternoon, the Mamaroneck volleyball team put the finishing touches on an unprecedented season, topping Scarsdale 3-1 to win the Southern Westchester Region Section I title. The win marked the first sectional championship for the Tigers and served as a fitting end to the careers of a talented senior class.
The matchup between league rivals started off at a blistering pace, with Mamaroneck edging the Raiders 30-28 in a back-and-forth opening set that established the breakneck pace that would characterize the rest of the match.
Junior Kaitlyn Welsh, who finished with 16 kills and 13 digs, said winning the first set was of the utmost importance on Saturday, given that the Raiders had beaten the Tigers in the last meeting between the two teams on April 9.
“Considering we split with them during the year, we came into the game wanting to erase that loss against them,” Welsh said. “In that first set we proved that we could stand up to them and win this thing.”
Mamaroneck took the second set as well before the scrappy Raiders won the third, forcing a fourth set. But Mamaroneck’s net play proved the difference-maker and senior Brynn Bizzard (22 kills) finally sealed the win with a perfectly placed shot that split the Raider players.
“I saw it opened up in the middle, they were all in the back, so I just put it in the middle,” Bizzard said. “I saw them all freeze, and I thought ‘that’s a win.’”
Mamaroneck entered the postseason with a 13-2 record that earned them a No. 2 seed. But they became the de facto favorites after top-seeded Pelham was forced to withdraw from the postseason tournament due to a COVID-19-related quarantine. Welsh believes that having a target on their backs helped the Tigers bear down for the final championship push.
“Honestly, on social media, people were writing comments saying they had to beat Mamaroneck now,” Welsh said. “We fed off that hunger and I think that helped us.”
Bizzard added that Pelham’s disqualification from postseason play helped to shine a light on the tenuous nature of the volleyball season.
“It was scary knowing that we could lose it at any second; every game, every practice could be our last, so we gave it all we had,” she said. “Ever since we were freshmen or sophomores, we thought this was going to be the team, so we had been waiting for this moment for a long time.”
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