After serving as a witness to someone else’s history, the West Genesee girls volleyball team wouldn’t mind establishing some history of its own when it next encountered Baldwinsville and the Section III Class AA championship was at stake.
Wednesday night’s sectional final at Cicero-North Syracuse would pit the Wildcats against the top-seeded, undefeated Bees, who topped WG twice in the regular season in three-set sweeps, the latter of them coming Oct. 4 in Camillus that gave long time B’ville head coach Mary Jo Cerqua her 400th win.
Getting there required the no. 2 seed Wildcats to first get past no. 3 seed Liverpool in Thursday’s sectional semifinal, a task that didn’t look easy since the Warriors had knocked off visiting WG in five sets two weeks earlier.
Since that defeat was fresh in the Wildcats’ minds, no extra motivation was required, and this match instead resembled the first encounter on Sept. 28 as here, just as it did before, WG wiped out the Warriors in three sets.
During a dominant first set, the Wildcats nearly doubled Liverpool’s total and prevailed 25-12. Though the second set was a lot closer, WG won here, too, 25-20, and went on to take the third set 25-16 to close it out.
To help WG prevail, Sasha Mekker picked up 20 assists, 13 digs and four kills, with Jaylin Mallore getting 17 digs. Carolyn King had a team-best 11 kills for WG as Rachel Hillery got seven kills, six digs, two assists and two blocks. Claire Leo had four kills and three assists, with Audrey Dennis adding three kills, Madison Smith four blocks and Madison Stanton five digs.
Liverpool’s Caitlyn Metrick put together 10 assists, three kills, two aces and two kills. Abby Anderson had six kills, with Karlie King getting four kills and five digs. Sophia Vangelov finished with five assists, three kills and three digs. Katie Boak and Ashley Teixeira had three digs apiece.
