Bedford girls volleyball comes back to knock off Exeter

BEDFORD - Anna McGann has seen over and over again in practice what the Bedford High School girls volleyball team is capable of doing.

On Wednesday night, the Bulldogs finally put it together against another team.

Despite dropping the first two games against Exeter, Bedford battled through a back-and-forth third set and rallied late in the fourth before completing the comeback in a 3-2 win over the Blue Hawks. Game scores were 18-25, 20-25, 27-25, 25-21 and 15-11.

"That is the heart that we’ve been looking for all season," McGann said. "We just haven’t been able to finish. That’s what we’ve been working on in practice and to see them be able to actually finish is awesome."

Bedford (5-5) kept things close in the first two games, but too many errors allowed Exeter to pull away in each. In the third game, the Bulldogs got out to a 5-1 lead before the Blue Hawks (6-4) eventually came back to tie it at 11, and from that point on, neither team led by more than three.

That happened once, when Exeter took a 24-21 lead, and McGann used a timeout.

"We had one girl (Breanna Moscillo) who was running all over the place, touching every ball. I was frustrated and I said ‘every ball is yours, no matter where you are.’ I said that’s how we need to play. She played awesome."

The Bulldogs won four straight points to take the lead and took the last two for the win.

"We came out and executed in the first two games and then we simply engaged in Bedford’s game," Exeter coach Mike McDonnell said. "All credit to them, they were resilient, down 0-2, and to come back in win in that fashion. They put us out of system, they took us off our game, and we just didn’t recover well.

"They made us uncomfortable and once we started to get uncomfortable, we were having a hard time recovering from it. I think the girls got a little overconfident at that point, and in that third game, we never really held the lead. We were chasing the whole time."

But Exeter took a five-point lead early in the fourth game, and when Bedford closed the gap, the Blue Hawks won five points in a row with Sam Wiberg serving to go up 17-11. But the Bulldogs answered by winning 10 of the next 13 points, getting big plays from Moscillo, Ramou Taal and Sophia Guerra to pull ahead 21-20.

A kill by Exeter's Sydney Johnson (17 kills, 14 digs) tied the game at 21, but Bedford won the final four points to send the match to a fifth game.

"When you have that back and forth, when you win that game, you’re serving notice," McConnell said. "They played better than us and overtook us."

The teams traded the first 11 points of the fifth game before Exeter took a 7-5 lead, but Bedford came back to win the next five with Jordan Starace serving, which included an ace, and Taal had a kill and a block. The Blue Hawks were able to get the lead down to two, 13-11, but the Bulldogs won the final two points to complete the comeback.

"We’ve been looking for a win like this for all season," McGann said. "It just gives them confidence. Once you win a game like this, then you get that confidence."