By Chris Paul
For the first time in a while, the Londonderry High School Boys Varsity Volleyball team hosted a playoff match and successfully advanced to the Division I Semifinals.
At the semifinals, they fell to the number one seed in the tournament, ending an outstanding season.
The Lancer males’ team has never won a division title and the closest they’ve gotten was back in 2011, when they fell to Salem 3-1 in the finals.
On Tuesday, June 7, LHS was able to bounce the Salem Blue Devils out of the championship with a very tough, straight set win in Londonderry.
The Lancers entered the tournament as the number four seed and Salem was number five with all three games reflected that close standing.
The first game ended with a 25-22 result, the second game finished at 25-20 and the third went back and forth in the final moments to result in a 29-27 victory, allowing LHS to move on to the semifinals.
Both sides brought plenty of fans to fill the seats at the LHS gymnasium, making for an extremely loud quarterfinal match.
In the shutout victory, sophomore Tyler Brown: finished with six kills, 13 assists and 11 digs; senior Brandon Galan had two kills, nine assists, six digs and an ace.
Sophomore Matt Doyle wound up with 27 digs and four aces; senior Nathan Seibert: six kills, one block and one dig; senior Ethan Green got four kills, two blocks and one dig; sophomore Ethan Munro had four kills and two digs; junior Camden Normand managed three kills, 10 digs and one ace; senior Corey Nolan added three kills, one block and five digs; junior Brady Joncas had eight digs; and junior Victor Elguezabal contributed seven digs in the match.
In the team’s semifinal match, at Nashua North High School, on June 9, against the number one-seeded Windham High School Jaguars, the points didn’t come easy.
The team lost 25-10 in the first set, 25-17 in the second game and were able to keep pace but lose in the third game 25-22.
In the final game of the season, Brown got five kills, nine assists, one block, three digs and one ace.
Brassard managed nine kills and a dig while Normand finished with a kill, a block, and six digs. Doyle had 20 digs; Joncas got five digs; Galan had eight assists, four digs and an ace.
Nolan got one kill, two blocks, three digs; Elguezabal had one kill and five digs; Seibert got a kill, one block; and Munro managed one dig.