The Pioneers (6-7) let a 2-0 lead get away against Hamilton-Wenham in five sets on Dig Pink Night Thursday at home, 25-10, 25-17, 23-25, 25-27, 13-15.
Trailing 22-17 in the fourth set, Lynnfield roared back on the serve of Erin Higdon. She rattled off four straight aces in a 7-2 run. That, combined with a massive cross-court kill from Erika Pasquale, flipped the score with the Pioneers serving for the match at 24-22. But a combination of two big kills from the Generals’ Gaby Campbell (19 kills) and a couple of Lynnfield hitting errors propelled the Generals into a decisive fifth set. After trailing 5-0, Lynnfield battled back and led 13-12, but Hamilton-Wenham won the last three points to seal the match.
Lynnfield coach Brent Ashley said the Pioneers had solid performances from Pasquale and Chase Carangelo who combined for more than 20 kills, as well as Janhavi Joglekar and Lilyana DeLeo who both had more than 13 assists. Hidgon notched eight-plus aces.
“Erin did that last year in the playoffs. She was kind of a swing player, but she’s turned into the real deal – a serving specialist,” Ashley said. “When she’s on, she’s on, just such a special server. Tonight though, I don’t think you could have predicted at any one time who was going to win the match. It was that close. We had a couple of match points, but just couldn’t close it out.”
With a two-set lead, the Pioneers fell way behind early in the third set, trailing by as many as eight at 14-6 and still trailed 20-13 before Lynnfield went on a 5-0 run to pull to within two at 20-18. Livia Tare, Lexi Vaquerano and Paquale were big winners during the run. The Pioneers pulled to within one point three times, but the Generals held on to take the set.
The fourth set was back-and-forth in the early going until the Generals went up by six, 18-12. Lynnfield battled back and had match points at 24-22 after a Higdon ace and 24-23, and 25-24 after a Hamilton-Wenham serving error, but couldn’t close it out.
Ashley said the Dig Pink event is always one of the team’s favorite matches of the year.
“I think this has been going on for about 12 years and the girls have raised more than $45,000 before this year over the last 10 years, which is fantastic,” Ashley said. “It’s such a cool event every year.”
Ashley said it’s been a challenge with the team still hovering around the .500 mark in spite of never really being out of a match.
“All of our sets are close it seems, just two or three points short,” Ashley said. “I just don’t know what needs to click and I hope the team isn’t getting discouraged. You have to hope this just doesn’t break their backbones, that this is the last straw and we just can’t get over the hill.”
Ashley said one of the highlights of the season has been the play of Carangelo and Pasquale.
“They’re both special players and are really our two best hitters right now,” he said. “We are young around them and they are still young, too. Neither of them really had any significant time last year, so they’re still trying to figure it all out.”
