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Windham volleyball advances to finals

Wednesday, November, 06 By Dan Hogan

DERRY — If Windham high school and St. Thomas Aquinas have a rivalry, then right now Windham is owning the Saints.

Last Thursday, Windham’s field hockey team defeated St. Thomas Aquinas in the semifinals of the New Hampshire Division 2 tournament. The exact same thing happened last night - except this time, it was the volleyball team that was victorious.

The second-seeded Jaguars defeated the third-seeded Saints last night in a 3-0 route at Pinkerton high school, and will advance to the Division 2 state championship on Saturday against Coe-Brown.

“We’ve never made it to a championship, so it feels unbelievable,” said senior setter and captain Melissa Cino, “The fact that St. Thomas has been our rival all of these years and the fact that we’ve come back and beat them twice this season is just a great feeling.”

Earlier in the season, St. Thomas put up a much better fight against Windham, but the Jaguars still pulled away with a win. That September game actually went to a fifth set - a far cry from last night’s 3-0 sweep. “We’ve grown so much since then,” said Cino, who also cited defensive adjustments made throughout the season as a reason for the team’s improvement.

Last season, Windham was knocked from the tournament in the quarterfinals by the very team that they will play on Saturday for the state championship - Coe-Brown. As a result, the girls and coaches on this team had a collective goal to get past the quarterfinals this season, and obviously beyond.

“Our curse was round 2,” said head coach Jill Bartlett. “We talked on Monday at our first team practice after round 2 and I said to them ‘I’m ready to go all the way. If you guys are, I am,’ and they all bought in, so here we are.”

Now that they have made it to the state championship, junior libero Hannah Scott can only use “crazy” to describe it. “It’s crazy just to say that in the beginning of the year that we were going to make the playoffs and break through quarterfinals, because that was our goal,” Scott said. “And then to make it past the semifinals is just crazy…It’s crazy to see just how much our team has grown, both as a family and as a program.”

This isn’t the first time that Coach Bartlett will be aiming for a state championship with some of these players. Melissa Cino, Ali Conners and Sam Crichton are all part of Windham’s lacrosse team that Bartlett has coached to a Division 3 state championship the past two seasons.

Windham will play top-seeded Coe-Brown this Saturday at 5 at Pinkerton Academy for the New Hampshire Division 2 state championship.