MINERSVILLE — In addition to watching Marian’s girls’ volleyball team qualify for the District 11 Class A championship match, fans also got a look at the future.
Led by freshman outside hitter Jasmine Mooney’s six kills in the second set, Marian breezed to a 25-17, 25-15, 25-11 victory over Tri-Valley on Tuesday night in a semifinal match in the Thomas Fitzpatrick Gymnasium at Minersville Area High School.
The Fillies (21-0) will oppose Nativity in Thursday’s 7 p.m. final at Minersville in a rematch of the Schuylkill League championship match.
Nativity outlasted Salem Christian in five sets in Tuesday night’s other Class A semifinal.
“They’re a really good team too, and I’m really excited because we already played them twice and we get to play them again,” Mooney said of facing the Green Wave in the district championship match.
The victory over fourth-seeded Tri-Valley (15-5) was Marian’s 35th consecutive dual-match victory, including 22 in a row by a three-set sweep.
“It was a good game. They’re playing good,” Marian head coach John Fallabel said about his team, but also admitted his team’s intensity was uneven.
“We didn’t have good intensity last night at practice. I wasn’t real happy with some of the things that went on tonight,” Fallabel said.
Yet Tri-Valley was unable to grab a lead against the Fillies, who took large leads in all three sets.
“Honestly, it looked a lot better at practice the last two days than it did now,”
Tri-Valley head coach Heather Drumheller said of her Bulldogs’ strategy. “I think, when they saw them (Marian), they got scared. They got nerves or something.”
The defending District 11 and PIAA Class A champion, Marian took a 21-7 lead in the opening set behind four-point service runs by seniors Alex Stroia and Abby O’Donnell. Abby Stank-iewitch accounted for three of Marian’s first seven points with kills.
Tri-Valley briefly rallied as Madison Deibert recorded two of her seven kills in the match, but after the Bulldogs fought off three set points, O’Donnell dinked a shot into the middle of Tri-Valley’s defense to end the set.
Marian’s Lauren Nietz then served the first four points, including an ace, in the second set. Mooney stepped up with three kills in a span of four points to hike Marian’s lead to five points. The edge eventually grew to 21-10 as Mooney added her fourth, fifth and sixth kills.
Mooney has joined a deep group of hitters led by Stroia, Stankiewitch, Emily Pilla and Maureen Kloap, but while the playing time has been limited, the 5-foot-10 freshman said the transition has been easy.
“They’re all great players, and they all welcomed me to the team,” Mooney said. “It’s like being part of a family.”
Tri-Valley rallied again briefly at the end of the second set as Alexis Artz dealt two aces in a four-point service run, but a service error and a setting mistake on the final two points allowed Marian to close out the Bulldogs.
After Stankiewitch drove home a kill off O’Donnell’s assist to score Marian’s first point of the third set, Pilla then served Marian to nine more points in a row and a 10-0 lead before Tri-Valley tallied a point. Eventually, Stankiewitch had six kills in the set, in which Marian pulled away to its largest edge at the finish.
O’Donnell had 28 assists and eight assists for Marian, which will attempt to score its third straight win over Nativity this season on Thursday.
“We’re going to practice like it’s any other Nativity-Marian game,” Fallabel said. “It’s as simple as that. We’re going to go in with a lot of intensity.”