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By Josh Perry
Hometown Weekly Correspondent
Last spring, the Needham High boys’ volleyball team confirmed its place among the top programs in the state by winning its first ever state title. Coming into this season, there was plenty of talk about the Rockets repeating, despite losing several key pieces from last year’s roster.
The season did not get off to a great start, with two losses in the opening six games that put Needham behind rivals Newton North and Framingham in the hunt for the Bay State Conference crown, let alone another state title.
But when Needham (22-3) beat Framingham in five sets and senior Trevor Schofield returned from an injury that had kept him out for the opening eight matches of the season, the Rockets turned a corner and started to look like potential champions.
They rattled off 18 straight wins, clinched a second straight South title and reached their second straight state championship game. On Wednesday night at Concord-Carlisle High, the quest for another title came to an end at the hands of the Flyers, as Needham was beaten 3-0 (25-23, 29-27, 25-23).
“I feel like if we played a little cleaner, a little better, a little more aggressive, then it wouldn’t have come down to those final points,” said Needham coach Dave Powell. “We fought hard but we had too many errors.
“We knew we had a shot and things came together and we won 18 in a row and we had a lot of good nights; tonight wasn’t one of them and they played better.”
Needham struggled to cope with Framingham senior hitter Kelvin Rivera, who had seven kills and two blocks in the opening set, added six more in the second, and provided the winning point in each of those first two sets. His power proved too much for the Rockets despite the strong blocking game of Schofield, Niklas Thommes, and Brendan Lombardi.
“We were trying to catch them in certain rotations when he was in the back row or he wasn’t involved,” said Powell, “and he made big plays in big moments and that’s what big players do.
“They served and received really well, defended really well and set really well, so it wasn’t just [Kelvin] but man he’s tough to stop down the stretch. I haven’t seen a lot of kids in Massachusetts who play volleyball like that.”
The Rockets had a strong defensive performance with Simon Shulman and Kyle Tobasky standing out for their ability to keep rallies alive, even if it meant chasing a ball out of bounds onto the opposite side of the net.
On the offensive side, sophomore Elijah Wallace set up Schofield on one side and Declan Ennis on the other to give Needham a varied attack. With Lombardi providing production in the middle, the Rockets stayed in every set, rarely trailing by more than a few points.
Needham had its chance in the second set to level the match. The Rockets turned around an 18-15 deficit by winning eight of the next 10 points and taking a 23-20 lead. Ennis had a kill smack close to the line on the far side of the court but the officials could not make a ruling about whether it was in or out and the point was replayed.
Rivera followed with a kill and Framingham battled back to tie the set at 24-24. Rivera would get another kill to close it out 29-27 and put the Flyers ahead by two sets. Although Needham battled in the third, Framingham was able to close it out and celebrate its first state title in the program’s history.
“It wasn’t really a ‘happy to be here’ mentality for us,” said Powell of the team’s attitude in the final. “We wanted to win and thought we could win, but tonight they just made more plays than we did.
“We were poised to make a run and we made it but just didn’t finish.”
Powell was disappointed at not being able to close out the season with a win, but he acknowledged how far the program has come in recent years from reaching its first sectional final to clinching its first state title.
“A couple of four-year starters, Simon and Trevor…have won close to 90 matches in four years,” he explained. “We feel like we’ve kind of stepped into a place in the state where we’re one of the premier programs.
“We want to be the premier program every year; that’s the goal.”
