Thanks to the petitioning and stellar play of Owen Fanning, Needham volleyball is in store for a new, upgraded shipment of state champion shirts.
By James Kinneen
Hometown Weekly Reporter
With temperatures hitting one hundred degrees in Boston on Wednesday afternoon, you might expect Needham High students on their summer vacation to have packed the local beaches and ponds. Instead, adorned in Hawaiian shirts and lei, they crowded into the high school gym to witness a thorough display of dominance from the Rockets boys volleyball team, who booked a ticked to the state finals with a three-set (25-10, 25-14 and 25-19), no sweat victory over Westford Academy. With the win, the Rockets set up a Friday, July 2, tilt against Lincoln-Sudbury for the 2021 state championship.
With Westford Academy coach Brandon Eang later admitting his team started out slow and lethargic, which he attributed to nerves, Needham jumped out to an 8-2 lead in the first set as their fans screamed with every point. The Rockets never let their foot off the gas and Westford Academy never got it together, until an unreturnable Derek Yang serve gave Needham the first set, 25-10.
The second set was closer, for a while. With the Rockets only ahead 14-10 midway through it, some big kills and aggressive displays of emotion from Nolan Leary, combined with great play from Harvard commit Owen Fanning, led to a key 6-2 run, which made the set 20-12. From there, Westford Academy couldn’t mount a comeback as a 5-2 run doomed them to a 25-14 loss.
Needham had not lost a set in 21 matches, so the hopes of Westford rattling off three in a row in the Rockets' own gym were pretty slim. Credit should go to Westford Academy for putting up a fight en route to losing the third set 25-19 - but there was a reason, on their way out of the gym, that both the “Grey Ghost” players and their cowboy-costume-wearing fans weren’t all that torn up about it: Needham was just much better.
“I felt we passed pretty well, served pretty tough and I thought for the most part we were pretty consistent outside of a couple lulls,” Coach Dave Powell declared after the game. “The performances were pretty good across the board. But I thought Raymond Wend set a pretty good game, and I thought Owen Fanning was pretty efficient hitting.”
Coach Powell expressed how grateful he was for his players, one of which (Fanning) created a change.org petition after the MIAA decided they wouldn’t hold playoffs beyond the regional round back in February, to get a chance to play for the title in front of their home fans.
“We’re really grateful for the opportunity we’ve been dealt, and to have people come out and support us. It’s really great for the kids. A year ago we were all locked in our houses having to deal with this unknown disease. They lost out on so much of their high school experience, so for everyone to get back here, we’re just really grateful to get this opportunity in front of our home crowd.”
Still, the Rockets work was not quite done. They petitioned to have a state title and won 21 matches to earn a chance to play for that state title. Now, it was time to take it.
“Lincoln Sudbury is really good, really physical and really skilled” Powell said after the game, “so we’re just going to try and be the best version of ourselves.”
Indeed, the Rockets did just that, further extending their streak of consecutive set victories and winning another 3-0 match on Friday in front of a raucous home crowd to clinch the 2021 Division 1 volleyball State Championship.
