EC Goodwin Girls Volleyball Wins Championship Game!!!!

WEST HARTFORD – Goodwin Tech girls volleyball junior Nathalie DeLarosa was admittedly nervous when service was handed to her during the decisive fifth set of Saturday’s CTC Tournament final.

Trailing Prince Tech 9-8 after having blown a 2-0 lead in the match, DeLarosa effectively hid those nerves and served the Gladiators to a championship.

The junior sent over four service aces to help turn a 9-8 deficit into a 13-9 lead, and after a service error, ended a final volley that lasted over a full minute with a kill to the middle of the court to give Goodwin Tech the dramatic 3-2 (26-24, 25-20, 19-25, 14-25, 15-10) win and the CTC championship trophy.

“I was so nervous,’ DeLarosa said. “I just wanted it. I knew I wanted it. I had it in my head and my team and how hard we’ve been working. I just kept my head in it.”

DeLarosa kept her focus through that final volley, when the Gladiators held a 14-10 lead before she closed it out with a one-handed kill from the back line to begin the celebration.

“I didn’t know that was going to happen,” DeLarosa said. “I blacked out. It was crazy.”

Heading into that fifth set, it didn’t look like Goodwin Tech’s championship was going to happen either.

After the Gladiators a 2-0 lead in the match and a 17-12 lead in the third set, the Falcons used a timeout to try and begin a comeback. Prince Tech came out of the break and ran off four straight points to pull within one, and later took its first lead of the set at 20-19 and fought off elimination with six straight points and a 25-19 win. Suddenly, the Falcons were looking like the team that lost just one match all season and had already beaten the Gladiators twice on the year.

“Prince is very good,” Goodwin Tech head coach Joe Granja said. “They came back, and they were going to give us a battle. We knew we were going to get a battle.”

In the fourth set, both teams traded points and fought to a 7-7 tie before the Falcons went on another run, taking an 18-10 lead. Prince Tech continued to rack up points through service aces and rolled to a 25-14 win, vanishing a Gladiators lead that once stood at 2-0.

“We just had to relax,” Granja said. “When we relax and call the ball, we’re very good. It’s just about relaxing.”

Goodwin Tech tried to remove the past two sets from its memory and took a 2-0 lead in the fifth set after a service ace from Korina Trammell. The Falcons took its first lead of the set at 5-4 and later stretched it to 9-6 thanks to a Gladiators error. Goodwin Tech responded behind the service of DeLarosa, whose service ace tied the score at nine, and her heroics were underway.

“She was huge,” Granja said of DeLarosa. “She’s been big for us all year. I’m really excited with how she played. But our seniors led us too…they all did a great job.”

DeLarosa wouldn’t have been in position to be the hero had it not been for a dramatic win by the Gladiators in the first set. A barrage of early errors by Goodwin Tech gave Prince Tech an early 3-0 lead to start the match, but a kill from Nyssa Foster-De Oro helped the Gladiators on a run to tie the set, and two straight service aces from Ada Guzman gave Goodwin Tech a 6-4 lead. Behind the serving of Alondra Santos, the Falcons answered with a run of their own, claiming the next five points to go ahead 9-6.

The set of runs continued when a kill from DeLarosa and a big block from De Oro helped the Gladiators take an 11-9 lead. DeLarosa continued her strong set with another kill to force a timeout from Prince Tech, which had watched Goodwin Tech rattle off six straight points to seize momentum.

The Falcons slowly battled back out of the timeout and tied the set at 16 on a service ace by Tifany Santiago-Rodriguez. Guzman responded with an ace of her own following a service error to put the Gladiators back in front. Tied at 20 later in the set, an error by Goodwin Tech gave the lead to Prince Tech, which followed with another service ace to take a 22-20 advantage and force a timeout from Granja.

Once again, the Gladiators fought back, tying the set at 22 on a kill from Tabetha Trammell and taking the lead on the next volley. Prince Tech tied the score on the ensuing volley and later tied it again at 24, but Goodwin Tech took the lead back thanks to a hit from Trammell that glanced off the hand of Prince Tech’s Amparo Rodriguez and out of play.

A Falcons error on the next volley completed the dramatic 26-24 win for the Gladiators, who kept that momentum through the second set, though things shifted quickly in the third. Fortunately, DeLarosa and Goodwin Tech gathered themselves before the fifth set and made sure it didn’t leave without a championship trophy.

“I feel like we got too comfortable,” DeLarosa said. “We let them get to us. When their energy went up, ours went down. Before the last set we told ourselves we wanted it more, and we came together and got it.”

EC Goodwin Championship Girls on the EC Goodwin Gladiator Morning News