Saturday, October 29, 2011

By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director

Julia Topor finished with a match-high 13 kills and Bogota swept its way to the county final with a 25-10, 25-20 win over Demarest on Friday.

OLD TAPPAN – With the way the quarterfinals went earlier this week in the Bergen County Girls Volleyball Tournament where all four matches went the full three sets, it was looking like this year's tournament was too close too call. But then the semifinals rolled around and the top two seeds separated themselves from the rest of the pack. A couple of hours before top-seeded IHA sailed through in the nightcap, No. 2 Bogota carried the momentum it built at the end of its quarterfinal win over defending champion Northern Valley/Old Tappan right into its semifinal match against third-seeded Northern Valley/Demarest.

Bogota trailed just three times in the match and was never behind by more than a point. The Bucs faced deficits of 1-0 in the opening set and 11-10 and 12-11 in Set 2. Other than that, it was smooth sailing as Bogota moved to within one win of its first-ever Bergen County championship with a 25-10, 25-20 win over Demarest on Friday night at Northern Valley/Old Tappan High School.

“The adrenalin rush was going, everyone was really excited and the bus ride over here was really loud. We just came here to play,” said Bogota senior Elise Brackett. “Today we were all over the court, we played good defense and we played Bogota volleyball. We stayed into it the whole time.”

Haley Hirsch led Demarest's attack with seven kills.

Bogota took control of the opening set with an 8-1 run that took the Bucs from up 8-5 to up 16-6. The last of those two points came off booming kills from the outside by junior Julia Topor, who scored the final five points of the Bucs come from behind three set victory over Old Tappan in the quarterfinals, carried the hot hand right on through. She finished with a match-high 13 kills and also played a part in the Bucs' defense, which frustrated Demarest's attack all night by not just digging up balls, but also turning them into offensive opportunities.

“I thought we played pretty well and there were some kids that did things that they hadn't done all year. Julia dug a couple of balls and we had some kid make some defensive plays that they haven't always made,” said Bogota head coach Brad DiRupo. “That is what you need to do when you play a team like Demarest.”

With Topor and sophomore Carly O'Sullivan blasting away from the outside off of precision sets by Rebecca Keleman and with defensive contributions from Brackett, middle blocker Brenda Curiel, libero Jennifer Ramirez, defensive specialist Iris Batista and Brackett, and everybody chipping in with quality serves, Bogota had it all working in the first game. A block by Curiel put the Bucs up 21-8, a Topor ace made it 22-8 and a blast off the block by O'Sullivan made it 23-8. Demarest rattled off three straight points to extend the opening set, but two straight hitting errors by the Norsewomen ended it and put them in a 1-0 hole.

Carly O'Sullivan finished with 8 kills for Bogota, which will face IHA in Sunday's county final.

“Bogota came out really strong, we came out nervous and we made a lot of errors and fell apart,” said Demarest head coach Beth Powell. “Bogota played fantastic and hopefully we will regroup for states.”

It looked like the second set was going to be more of the same as O'Sullivan hit one down the center stripe and Kelly Daley served two straight aces to give the Bucs a 7-3 lead. But Demarest showed some fight and rallied to get back even at 10. A Haley Hirsch kill kicked off a 5-0 run and her sister, Kathryn Hirsch, went down the line on the left to tie the game. A net violation against Bogota after Demarest's Melissa Pesce kept the point alive with a lunge into the bet post gave Demarest an 11-10 lead, its first since it scored the opening point of the match.

Topor tied the game at 11 with a hard swing from the outside before Demarest went ahead for the last time when Bogota was called for a lift. Topor then tied the match for the final time at 12-12 with another kill and Bogota began to pull away.

“We don't want to play three games [like we did in the quarterfinals]. We want to play two games, get the win and move on. That is what we were going for here tonight,” said Topor. “I just wanted the ball. That is my job on this team, to hit, and we all just wanted to do our jobs and get to the final.”

To put the exclamation point on the win, O'Sullivan and Topor, probably the best pair of outside hitters in Bergen County if not the state, took turns. First it was O'Sullivan who got the Bucs to game point with a blast down the line and then it was Topor who ended the match with a boomer from the other side.

Melissa Pesce handed out 11 assists for Demarest.

Topor finished with a match-high 13 kills, while O'Sullivan added 8 kills and 4 digs. Brackett finished with 10 service points, 3 assists and 3 digs; Keleman handed out 19 assists to go with 8 digs and 6 service points and Ramirez paced the defense with 13 digs to go with 5 service points. Haley Hirsch led Demarest with 7 kills, Kathyrn Hirsch added 6, Pesce had a team-high 11 assists and libero Heather Park added 12 digs for the Norsewomen.

So now it is off to the finals for Bogota, which will get a rematch against top-seeded IHA in Sunday's county championship to be held in Old Tappan. Bogota let a 24-20 first set lead get a way before losing in two sets in their regular season matchup back on October 14 in Washington Township. That was the Bucs' lone loss of the season and they are playing as well as they have all year heading into the final.

Long regarded as a nice little story, a Group 1 school that makes a run against the power programs before bowing out gracefully with a moral victory, it is certainly different this time around for Bogota, which is a real threat to win the county title and then do some real damage in the state tournament where it is the defending Group 1 state champion.

“Sometimes we do feel a little disrespected because we work hard. I am not saying that we work harder than any other team, but if there is a team out there that works harder than us I would like to see it. We just feel like we are being rewarded for all of the work we do and that includes their offseason work with their club team,” said DiRupo, whose team reached the semifinals of the Tournament of Champions last season before falling to eventual champion Old Tappan. “The skill level has always been there for this team, it has always just been up here [in our heads]. When we get that, and we are well on our way to getting that, we are going to be a dangerous team.”

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