The storybook script flowed accordingly through 20 of 21 chapters of Fitch High’s volleyball chase for No. 1 on Nov. 15 at Newington High School.
The Falcons finished the regular season undefeated in conference play (15-0). That has not happened in a long time. They’ve been ECC Large division champs; ECC tourney champs; runner-up in CIAC tourney. Their overall record was 21-4, ranked fifth in the state.
The Fitch High girls’ volleyball team stood on the brink of not only the program’s first state championship, but the first for any Eastern Connecticut Conference team. The Falcons had just taken a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five Class LL state finals over Norwich Free Academy, a team they had already beaten three times earlier in the season.
Coach Steve Banks was set to put a fitting cap on a 12-year coaching career, going out on top as the state champ.
Eight seniors, headed by captain Aubrey Latham, were seemingly minutes away from tasting the fruits of victory. Latham poised to not only to join her older siblings—sister Jen was the 2004 State Open champ in the javelin throw and brother Ben was No. 1 in the 2008 javelin throw—as state title holders, but trump both of them as the leader of a team sport state champ.
Something happened on the way to Fitch’s story book ending; NFA decided there are two sides to every story.
In a turn of events that needed to be seen to verify their validity, NFA abruptly turned on a switch to reverse Fitch’s string of season-long and Class LL title match dominance. The result was a comeback of the ages or heartbreak of the ages, depending on your point of view. NFA, which had lost three straight matches to Fitch in the regular season and fell way behind in the final, won the final three games to shock the Falcons, 15-25, 33-35, 25-15, 25-17, and 15-8.
Though Fitch had pretty much owned NFA, there was a lingering doubt thanks to the presence of the ECC’s best female athlete, NFA junior Kastine Evans. A Division I basketball prospect, Evans showed the more volleyball she plays, the more dominant she becomes. Evans and explosive senior middle hitter Cathy Wilson took over the match after Fitch won an epic second game, seemingly shutting the door on the Wildcats in a 35-33 win.
Games are played to 25 with the winner needing to win by two. To play to 35 points is tantamount to a quadruple overtime basketball game. Losers of such games usually don’t recover quickly.
“After we won a big, long game like that, you tend to think that’s it, they’re all done. It was like we felt, ‘OK, it’s all over,’” Banks said. “We stopped playing defense. Volleyball is a game of momentum. Once they got it, it was hard for us to get it back.”
The fans were so exhausted watching Fitch pull out the second-game win, there was a mad dash to the concession stand to buy water. Instead of receiving a jolt of energy to go for the kill as they did in a 3-0 victory over NFA in the ECC Championship just three weeks prior, Fitch relaxed and NFA never gave up.
Fitch had been in this situation before, taking a 2-0 lead over Southington in the quarterfinals only to need a 16-14 win in Game 5. There was no comeback juice in the tank this time.
“Their big hitters [Wilson and Evans] were attacking, and ours stopped attacking,” Banks said.
Evans (31 assists, 29 kills) either fed Wilson (34 kills) for unreturnable spikes or spiked the ball or dinked it into open spots for points. Latham, Fitch’s all-around ace player, was not as dominant with her kills (14 overall) and could never get on a scoring roll with her line-drive serve. Frank, who completely neutralized Wilson in the ECC Final, also couldn’t keep up with her NFA counterparts and finished with 15 kills.
In the last three games, Fitch committed the type of first-game errors (13) that NFA did early on. Misfiring on sets, forcing players to simply loop the ball over the net, spiking into the net or out of bounds or setting up out of position on defense.
“It’s tough to get this close and not close it out,” Banks said. “It was right in our grasp, and we let it get away. It hurts like hell, but NFA earned it.”
This won’t be the last you hear of many of these Falcons. The 2008-2009 scholastic season should rank as one of the most memorable in Fitch girls’ sports history. The senior class is loaded with great athletes. Latham will play on a star-studded girls’ basketball team, knocking heads with Evans again. Latham, Chelsea Fogarty, and Katie Stack among others should join a loaded softball team that reached the Class LL semifinals last season.
They fell just short of a state title in volleyball, but they will have plenty to look forward to in the winter and spring seasons. And Banks says Fitch will be heard from again in volleyball.
“The loss to NFA does not diminish the accomplishments of this year’s team,” he said. “I’m proud to be the coach of this group of players. We worked hard and developed into an outstanding team. We just ran out of steam in the finals. It was a long hard road, but we never gave up. I received compliments all over the state about the team. That’s what this is all about. One loss does not define this season. The friendships that girls developed and the respect of the teams and media around the state make the loss a little easier to take.”
By Larry Kelley
Special to the Times