DENVER – After finishing second at the Class 5A state volleyball tournament the last two years, the Grandview Wolves weren’t going to go down without a fight in their second-round match against Rampart Friday at the 2022 girls volleyball state championships.
Despite falling behind 2-0 after the first two sets, the No. 5 seed Wolves rallied to win the next three to move on to a 2 p.m. contest Saturday against No. 1 Valor Christian.
“Early on in the season, we had a couple of five-setters and it didn’t always go the way we wanted,” Grandview head coach Rob Graham said. “We had a tournament a couple of weeks ago down in the Springs playing a very good Thompson Valley team and we went to that fifth set and it kind of went like that. The energy was incredible. They were so happy. We could tell they were down a little bit over there. It was all desire at that point. Our girls showed it.”
Rampart won the first two sets, 28-26 and 25-21 before the Wolves turned the tide, winning the third set 25-23 and the fourth set, 25-20.
The game plan didn’t change for the Wolves between the second and third sets, but Graham credits a rotation change by Rampart mid-match to the final outcome in the fifth set.
“They rotated to start so we didn’t have our big blocker against their big hitter,” Graham said. “In that fifth set, they actually switched it, so I think it actually worked against them. They got out of their rhythm. They’re used to starting a certain way, a certain rotation, and then they got stuck in that bad rotation that would have normally come later in the game.”
In the decisive fifth set, the Wolves jumped out to a big lead and never looked back. A kill by Emerson Deferme gave Grandview an 11-4 lead. It was one of three kills the junior had in the latter part of the match.
At 13-8, a hitting error on Rampart pushed the set to match point and another hitting error at 14-9, gave the Wolves the victory and a date with the tournament’s top seed.
“Our team just had a lot of grit and we didn’t want to give up after two sets,” Deferme said. “We’ve been state runner-up two years in a row and we didn’t want to do that again. We just want to push and push and push until we can’t anymore and we are ready to just have a great end to the season.”
Grandview got to its matchup against Rampart by sweeping Denver South in the opening round. Rampart had a bye. In other first-round matchups, Fossil Ridge defeated Chatfield, 3-2, before being swept by Valor Christian.
Chaparral swept Heritage before losing to Rock Canyon, 3-1. Cherry Creek needed five sets to get past Cherokee Trail before moving on to sweep Mountain Vista in the final match of the night.