Oct 11, 2006 By Mike Ciarochi 3 min read

Laurel Highlands clinched a berth in the WPIAL Class AAA girls volleyball playoffs and inched ever closer to school history with a 3-1 Section 2-AAA win over Canon-McMillan Tuesday night. The Fillies have made the playoffs in the past, but never claimed a section title in volleyball, as coach Jacquie Kazmierczak noted with a simple glance at the blank banner on the wall at Harold “Horse” Taylor Memorial Gymnasium.

Laurel Highlands (9-2, 7-1) can finish no worse than tied for first with either Canon-McMillan (6-5, 6-3) or Trinity, which also has three section losses. The Fillies will clinch the section title outright with a win at Connellsville Thursday or at home to Uniontown next Tuesday.

The Big Macs handed LH its only section loss earlier in the season, so to say the Fillies were ready for this rematch would be a major understatement.

“They were on anything they did,” Kazmierczak said. “Our passes were sharp, our sets – that was probably the best Jessica (Zavatchen) has set all year – and I couldn’t find a bad hitter.”

Not that she was looking too hard.

The results were as dominating as a Jessica Galica kill, as the Fillies ran away with 25-15 and 25-11 wins in the first two games.

Of course, one team’s domination is another team’s downfall, as Canon-McMillan coach Jessica Bosacki attested.

“We made way too many unforced errors to beat a team as good as Laurel Highlands,” she said. “I don’t want to take anything away from them, they played very well. They put the ball down and we didn’t do a good job of digging.

“Our passing was off, too, but it was more than just that. We weren’t playing within our system and to beat a team of that caliber, you have to play within your system. Our passing was off and that made our sets off and it really wrecked our whole game.”

The third game saw the Big Macs take their first leads of the match. They started with a 2-0 lead, saw the Fillies move ahead by a few points and battled through ties at 12 through 15. A 6-0 CM run made it 21-15 and the visitors went on to a 25-20 win to force a fourth game.

As much as the Fillies had dominated the first two games, they seemed to put it in cruise control for the third game, something that’s a bit troubling to Kazmierczak.

“Our mental game,” she said when asked about the third game. “You get so far ahead that you think you have it in hand and you tend to forget the basics. That’s been a problem of ours.”

The fourth game was close for about the first half, as LH clung to a 14-12 lead before running off seven straight to pull ahead, 21-12, on the way to a 25-17 clinching win.