Wood and Mann put Garnet Valley back on top in five-set thriller with Strath Haven

NETHER PROVIDENCE — For the last decade, there have been two overarching constants in Central League volleyball.

First, the league is usually orderly in determining its champion. The top team finishes with wins over everyone, the second team with wins over all but the top team, the third team losing to just the top two, and so on.

Second, when all is done, either Garnet Valley or Strath Haven invariably survive on top.

Even as the first stipulation descended into the chaos of a wacky Central League campaign, the second held true. Maddie Wood and Sam Mann made sure of it.

Those two standouts — one a freshman, the other a senior — took control in the decisive fifth set Wednesday, leading Garnet Valley to a 3-2 win over Strath Haven.

The victory — by game scores of 25-19, 19-25, 23-25, 25-23, 15-8 in a pulsating affair — earns the Jaguars (13-4, 10-1) their fourth straight Central League title and sixth this decade. The other four? They belong to Strath Haven (11-6, 9-2), which last won in 2015. Forget that both teams on the court had their lone league loss hung on them by Penncrest this season, though the Lions lost to three other opponents, hence the unusual disorder that still bestowed a crisp and clean winner-take-all finale by the usual suspects.

By whatever zaniness they arrived, it would seem only fitting that five sets were required to decide the match Wednesday, even at 92 points each after four sets, to boot.

Ultimately, though, Mann and Wood saw to the separation. Though three years separate the senior middle blocker and the freshman setter, each understood the fifth set was a chance to shine.

Wood had authored an eight-point service run in the first to salt that set away. She added two aces to a four-point, second-set lead that the Jags squandered, and started Garnet out with a 6-1 lead in the fourth as it rallied back.

In the fifth, Wood took control with a five-point run on her serve to start the fifth, getting the Jags a third of the way home and in firm control.

“She’s really tough,” Mann said of Wood. “I remember as a freshman, I was scared to come into this game. And the fact that she’s coming in stone cold, ready to play, ready to terminate the ball, it’s amazing to see that.”

With Wood at the service line, Mann also knew her responsibility. The 6-2 Jefferson University commit has only a limited window to make an impact, only playing in front-row rotations. Though she’s become adept at deferring to teammates in the name of team growth, with the Jags throwing out their best personnel to start the fifth, Mann knew she had to pounce.

She did, tucking away the first three kills of the set. She added another kill and a block, rotating out with the Jags up 8-3. She tallied 20 kills and eight blocks on the night, making just two errors with a .562 attacking percentage.

“I put so much trust in Sam,” said Wood, who tallied 38 assists, 16 digs and six aces. “I trust her at the net, she’s such a dominant force. When she’s in, I’m going to give the ball to her as much as possible because no one can stop her. But when she’s out, I tend the spread the ball around.”

For all of Mann’s dominance, it was her kill that actually flipped the momentum in Strath Haven’s favor. Mann notched the first point of the second set, but it came after a valiant effort by Haven’s Katie Rosini, giving up some five inches, to stuff Mann with a solo block. That dogged determination carried over into everything Haven accomplished in the second and third sets to get back into the match.

“It set the entire tone for the rest of the game,” junior Ellie Fisher said. “(Mann) was the one player we needed to shut down. She’s a good player, and I think that was one of the biggest things, we had to shut her down as fast as we could.”

It was evident again in the third set when Gabby McGinn took a Mann blast off the face, but shrugged it off. It hardly slowed the setter, who tallied 26 assists and beguiled Garnet Valley for eight kills with quick dumps over the net.

Fisher got going in the second set on the way to 15 kills, and Olivia Dumont added nine kills. Megan Prendergast (15 digs) and Emily Crowther (12 digs) paced the back-line defense.

As Fisher and company surged, Garnet Valley’s non-Mann front-liners sagged. The Jags led the second set, 19-17, before Haven rattled off the last eight points, seven on the serve of Emily McGinn.

“We knew that we could do better and that wasn’t our best game,” Fisher said of the first. “We fought so hard the whole, entire season just to waste it like that. We knew we could do better and we needed to do better.”

Haven led by as many as eight points in the third, thanks to five Fisher kills, before a block and a kill by Emily McGinn earned them the set. Garnet Valley rallied in the fourth behind Caitlyn Hagerty, who supplied five of her eight kills in the frame.

When the tide turned for Garnet, it was due in part to freshmen like Wood. Mary Pearl Tienabeso had five kills and two blocks in the middle, and Kelly St. Germain added four kills and six digs. Ally Hurford added six aces, including two on a five-point run in the third set.

The young players took their lead from Mann, but also from one of their own.

“I don’t really think I had a doubt in my mind,” Wood said. “We’re going to win this set. I trust my teammates and believe in them so much, I knew that we could do it from the start.”