Onondaga — Whatever else happens during a point in volleyball, it always starts with a serve, so it makes sense to master that part of the game.
And the Cazenovia Lakers have done so, at least to the degree that no one would come close to them on the way to a third consecutive Section III Class C fall championship.
Cazenovia did not lose a set in either of their sectional matches, including Wednesday’s final at Onondaga Community College’s Allyn Hall, where those top-notch serves helped produce a sweep of no. 3 seed Skaneateles.
Before this season, said head coach Brian Ellithorpe, his team mostly leaned on conventional serves. But two years of one-sided defeats in the state playoffs to Section VI powerhouse Eden forced a change of tactics.
Thus, several of the Cazenovia players started employing jump serves, which carry a greater risk of going out of bounds – but also can lead to easy points without a great deal of physical labor.
Against Skaneateles, whom it swept twice in the regular season on Sept. 24 and Oct. 13, Cazenovia won the all-important coin toss and got to serve first.
Jenna Britton promptly delivered an ace. Then another strong serve led to another point. Between Britton and Paige Nardella, Cazenovia bolted out to a 6-1 lead in the opening set.
Not until the score was 17-9 in Cazenovia’s favor did Skaneateles earn a point on its own serve, and by then the deficit was too much to overcome, the set ending 25-15 in the champions’ favor.
Only in the second set did Skaneateles put up a prolonged stand, roaring to a 9-2 lead. Again, though, Cazenovia served its way back, using a 17-3 run to turn it around, leading to a 25-19 victory and a two-sets-to-none margin.
Britton got a chance to open the third set, and she promptly delivered six consecutive points. Then, on Lauren Lyons’ serve, Cazenovia put together another 9-0 run and broke the set open.
continued — By a 25-16 margin, another Laker duel was claimed, with Britton earning four aces to go with her 24 assists and Danielle Tedesco also getting four aces, plus 12 kills and six blocks.
Lyons and Molly Carges had two aces apiece, with Carges matching Morgan Hodinger’s total of six kills. Nardella contributed four kills.
All of this, of course, led right back to Eden – namely, a regional final Saturday at against the Raiders at Chittenango High School.
Cazenovia hoped this confrontation with Eden would prove different than the others – but it did not, as once again the Buffalo-area superpower took just three sets to put an end to the Lakers’ state title dreams.
They were tied, 8-8, in the first set when a series of service errors gave the Raiders all the help it needed, and it prevailed 25-18. During the second set, they were again close before Eden took over in the middle stages and didn’t let up until it had a 25-13 victory and a 2-0 margin.
Determined to extend the match, Cazenovia answered every Eden run in the third set with one of its own, even forcing a time-out when it trailed by just one, 21-20. Just when it mattered, though, the Raiders scored four of the last five points and, by a 25-21 margin, earned yet another trip to Glens Falls for the state final four, leaving the Lakers behind.
