SPORTSMANSHIP SHINES IN HORNET VOLLEYBALL PLAYOFF LOSS
By Ben Kaufmann
County Courier
JERICHO – Tied with No. 4 Mt. Mansfield at 6-6 midway through a decisive fifth set to 15, players from No. 5 Enosburg approached the referee of Friday’s Division I volleyball quarterfinal after the official had given a seventh point to the Hornets. For the second time Friday evening, the Hornet players let the referee know he’d missed a tip and the point should actually be given to Mt. Mansfield. The referee obliged, Mt. Mansfield took a 7-6 lead and never trailed again, escaping with a 3-2 (25-18, 27-25, 21-25, 21-25, 15-13) win over Enosburg.
“I don’t know if it’s a smart coaching decision but it’s a really good teaching decision and a life skill,” Enosburg coach Jason Robtoy said of his players ensuring Friday’s thriller was played fairly. “We try to teach integrity, you don’t want to win dishonestly. There were a lot of times, especially in the early days of volleyball, when we were really short refs – it’s really hard to be one ref and you can’t always see everything.”
Enosburg (7-8) had already proved its mettle simply by making it to a fifth set. Mt. Mansfield (9-6) pulled away late in a first set which had been tied at 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10 before the Cougars took a 25-18 win. Some strong moments at the net from Enosburg’s Isaiah Sartwell helped the Hornets make a push in the second set and a monstrous spike from Devyn Gleason gave the visitors a 25-24 lead. But MMU defended the next play well to tie it, then powerhouse Cougar outside hitter Luke Walters crushed a go-ahead point and Enosburg knocked a ball just wide on the next play to drop the set, 27-25, and fall behind two sets to none.
“I’m really proud of my guys, being down two sets to nothing it’s easy to hang your heads and give it up and they didn’t,” coach Robtoy said. “They pulled back and it was really evenly matched, I’m just proud.”
The entire roster stepped up for the Hornets on Friday. When there was a point needed, Gleason and Kolten Robtoy were there and ended up with 17 kills apiece. Nathaniel Robtoy served brilliantly for the Hornets and ended the evening with 24 assists and 15 digs. Landon Blake picked up 13 assists and six emphatic kills.
In the crucial third set, Aydan Dash made an important kill to stop an MMU run and give EFHS a 17-14 lead. A wild point with the ball bouncing off an air duct went to MMU to give the hosts a 21-20 lead but Sartwell answered with a big block to knot the score at 21-21. Blake served Enosburg home, benefitting from a nice block by Nathaniel Robtoy, to make it a 2-1 contest with a 25-21 Hornet win.
PHOTO GALLERY: Enosburg at MMU – Quarterfinal
Those big blocks were a theme Friday along with impressive digs from the Hornets. Nathaniel Robtoy had three blocks and 15 digs, Blake picked up two blocks and four digs, Kolten Robtoy and Xander Paquette had six digs apiece, Gleason had five, Cayden Yates had two, Kyle Ovitt had one and Dash added a block.
“We are so unbelievably lucky to get by them,” said Mt. Mansfield coach Rick Gouse. “First of all, they play unbelievably as a team. Second of all, it’s the best defense in the league, bar-none the best defense in the league.”
Twice in the fourth set with MMU threatening an Enosburg lead, Gleason responded with a massive spike to return possession to the Hornets. Looking to run away to square the match up, Enosburg saw the scoreboard turn to 20-15 in its favor after an MMU kill went out of bounds. For the first, but not the last time Friday, Enosburg approached the referee to admit to tipping the ball. The score changed from 20-15 to 19-16 but the Hornets held on. Kolten Robtoy scored the point to get the Enosburg lead to 24-20 and two points later the match was even at 2-2 thanks to a second straight 25-21 game.
The tie-breaking fifth set to 15 looked for a while as though it may not be able to produce a winner. An important tip followed by a big block from Nathaniel Robtoy gave Enosburg the first point, then consecutive spikes by Gleason and a back-and-forth play featuring saves from Gleason and Kolten Robtoy ended up with a Robtoy kill off a Blake assist. The issue for Enosburg was that each of those points was countered by MMU: the tiebreak was knotted at 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, 4-4, 5-5 and 6-6. Enosburg’s admission of a point erroneously given made it a 7-6 MMU lead and though the Hornets tied it once more at 7-7, the Cougars then rolled off three straight points for a 10-7 lead. MMU led the rest of the way and won the match with a 15-13 triumph in the tiebreaker set.
Coach Robtoy was emotional following the contest, more so from the end of a run with a group he cared for than the pain of erasing a 2-0 deficit only to lose a close tiebreaker. The longtime Hornet volleyball coach said goodbye to four seniors who have been crucial to the program – Kolten Robtoy, Nathaniel Robtoy, Blake and Logan Gendron.
“My son’s a senior so I’ve known most of those guys forever,” coach Robtoy said. “It’s really bittersweet for me because my son has been coming to practice since he was in kindergarten so I’ve been coaching him forever and some of these guys I’ve coached since freshman year and known them since they were little kids. It’s pretty emotional right now for me that I won’t see them on the court again. But they’re an awesome bunch of guys. I’ve coached for a lot of years now and this is just one of the best teams I’ve ever had.”
Mt. Mansfield advances to a Tuesday semifinal against No. 1 CVU, which defeated BFA-St. Albans in Saturday’s quarterfinal, 3-1.
