Mattituck girls volleyball downs Oyster Bay to win Long Island Class C title
Mattituck celebrates their victory during the Class C Long Island High School girls volleyball finals against Oyster Bay at LIU Post College on Saturday, Nov. 13, 2021 in Brookville. Credit: Newsday
The countdown to Glens Falls was on.
Bridget Ryan stood at the service line with her Mattituck team trailing by three points in the fourth set of Saturday’s Long Island class C girls volleyball championship at LIU Post.
She started chipping away points from her team's deficit, and by the time she was done the Tuckers were up nine and on the verge of the title.
That 12-0 run helped key Mattituck to a 25-11, 17-25, 25-18, 25-14 win over Oyster Bay and a trip to the state tournament next Saturday.
"The last few points all I could think was, ‘This many points until Glens Falls,' " Ryan said. "And by the end I was thinking, ‘There’s no way that just happened.’ It was all kind of a blur."
Ryan didn’t do it all by herself. Outside hitter Sage Foster played a huge role, dominating around the net with 31 kills, many of them powerful strikes that helped set the tone.
"We’ve been working really hard trying to get to this game today," Foster said. "It’s amazing. It shows that all of our progress and work has paid off."
The first set was close early until a run of points took Mattituck (16-2) from a tie at 6 to a 14-7 lead. It was one of many runs the Tuckers used in the game to take control of each of the sets they won.
"Each point that we knock off when we’re down is so huge for us," Ryan said. "We know that it’s just getting us closer to where we need to be."
The second set didn’t go as smoothly for Mattituck, as Oyster Bay (7-9) jumped out to a 7-0 lead and never trailed.
"That first set was just as I was hoping and everything was very sharp," Mattituck coach Frank Massa said. "After that it took us until late in the third set to get back to what we were doing and from that point we kept the unforced errors down."
And once they were able to lock in and play their game the countdown began.
"Sometimes we have games where we start off slow and build up our momentum later on," Forster said. "I knew we would get it back."
Gene Morris joined Newsday's sports department in September 2012 and covers high school sports. He earned a journalism degree from Stony Brook University in 2010.
