Bayport-Blue Point girls fall in state volleyball

GLENS FALLS, N.Y. — The odds were against the Bayport-Blue Point girls volleyball team, but the players didn’t want to hear about that.

Playing the final two sets of pool play in the Class B state championships at Cool Insuring Arena, the Phantoms needed to twice defeat Westhill, which won its first four matches, to force a tiebreaker.

“We really gave it our all,” senior Cathleen Farrell said. “We just knew we had to stick together as a team to take sets from this team, because we knew how good they were.”

If their season was about to end, the Phantoms were going to do it their way — with a fight. After taking the first set over Westhill, 25-20, Bayport-Blue Point dropped the final set by the same score, finishing 3-3 in pool play, one game shy of forcing a playoff for a chance at playing in the state final.

“We knew that we had to work for each other and wanted to prove to each other that we could do it,” senior Isabella Imbo said. “We just have so much grit and so much energy and this is a really good team. I love everyone on it.”

Bayport-Blue Point (10-2) opened pool play with back-to-back 25-15 victories over Broadalbin-Perth. The Phantoms dropped their next two sets to Owego, 25-19, 25-14, before playing Westhill.

“We’ve been working all year about mental toughness,” coach Toni Mulgrave said. " . . . Keep playing point for point until they tell us we have to get off the court. They did that. They fought until the very, very last point.”

The Phantoms, which defeated Glenn in the Suffolk B final and Wheatley in the Long Island Class B championship, advanced to their second state championships in the last three seasons, due largely to an experienced core, featuring seniors Marissa Laterra, Shannon Carey, Lyndsey Ingber, Jessica Travaglia, Emma Fiorentine, Farrell and Imbo.

“They’ve been literally letting all the underclassmen know that this is what it takes to get up here and even still, you might come up short, and they were amazing,” Mulgrave said. “I’m just going to miss this group so bad.”

And the seniors wanted to make sure they left a legacy and future for the team, which returns key players such as juniors Elizabeth Auwaerter, Anna Giunta, Sage Renneisen and sophomore Haley Prisinzano. After reaching the state championships in 2016, the current seniors again wanted to reach Glens Falls for the past and future student-athletes.

“It’s great we could do it for those seniors because it was those seniors who inspired us to come back,” Imbo said. “They took us here and we wanted to take underclassmen here, too.”

“This is all we wanted, just to come here and get the chance,” Farrell said. “I couldn’t have asked for any more.”