Bedford sweeps Nashua South to advance to first D1 girls volleyball championship

DERRY - For the last few weeks, the Bedford High School girls volleyball team has been playing like a team that doesn't want its season to end.

With 10 seniors on the roster, the Bulldogs know there playoff run is the end of the line, and after Wednesday's performance, they'll get one more match together.

No. 6 Bedford pulled off its second straight upset of the tournament, knocking off No. 2 Nashua South 3-0 in the Division I semifinals at Pinkerton Academy. Game scores were 25-20, 25-22 and 25-21.

The win sends the Bulldogs (17-4) to the championship for the first time in program history, where they will face No. 1 Hollis Brookline at 5 p.m. Saturday at Pinkerton.

"I am so stoked," Bedford senior Breanna Moscillo said. "It is so awesome. We didn’t expect to (sweep South), we hoped not to go to five (sets), but we know they are a good team, so we were expecting anything. The fact we finished in three shows how far we’ve come and how we can really beat anyone."

The Bulldogs have know knocked off two of the teams they lost to during the regular season - South (19-2) and No. 3 Bishop Guertin in the quarterfinals. Bedford also lost to the Cavaliers (20-0) back on Sept. 12.

"I think if you talked to us in the beginning of the season, to now, the maturity has shifted, and it’s continued to grow," Bedford coach Anna McGann said. "When you have a team dictating to me that we’re winning this, and I don’t have to say it, it’s a pretty cool thing. They keep their cool and keep playing the game."

Ramou Taal finished with nine kills for the Bulldogs while Kendra Barnard added five and Moscillo had four. Jasmine Attar had 19 digs and Jordan Starace had eight aces while Emily Adams had six blocks.

After holding off the Panthers in the first set, Bedford got out to a 12-0 lead in the second, with Starace serving and getting two aces during that run.

"You can’t win when you give them 13 points off unforced errors and service errors," South coach Wayne Siejkowski said. "When we kept the ball in play, we scored points, and then we’d just decide to hit the ball out. I’m a little disappointed in our showing. I thought we’d played much better all season long."

South started to pick up some momentum, turning a 14-2 deficit down to 17-10 and forcing Bedford to take a timeout. The Panthers kept coming after the break, and went ahead 20-19, as the Bulldogs used another timeout.

"I thought we had gotten over our funk," Siejkowski said of the run.

But Bedford won the first four points out of the timeout to go up 23-20 and closed out the win. While the Panthers kept the third set close, the Bulldogs led almost from start to finish, with South tying the game at 21, before Bedford won the final four points.

"Volleyball is a funny game," McGann said. "You get one ball back and the momentum can shift. When we were up two, we didn’t want to let it go to a fourth or a fifth set because the momentum would shift back to them. Points are going to go back and forth, you’ve got a really good team on the other side."