Girls Volleyball: No. 14 Bogota gets revenge, beats No. 17 Verona for Gr. 1 title (PHOTOS)

A tough loss to Verona in a regular season matchup on October 17 was all the motivation necessary for Bogota.

With the setting for the rematch the NJSIAA Group 1 final at William Paterson in Wayne, Bogota, No. 14 in The NJ.com Top 20, avenged the setback with a dominant 25-13, 25-20 showing.

The Group 1 championship was the seventh overall for Bogota, which was appearing in the school’s ninth final. It was the third consecutive trip to the final for No. 17 and defending champion Verona, which took the regular season battle 27-25 and 29-27.

"We lost to them at home a few weeks ago and it was probably the best thing for us," Bogota coach Brad DiRupo said. "It woke us up a little bit. We went through a period where we were feeling sorry for ourselves, but I think the loss was the best thing for us because it made us hungrier and it made our preparation better."

Bogota managed to take the first game by winning 15 of the last 17 points. Libero Amy Chavez was the server for four winning points to give Bogota a 15-12 advantage, and Alyssa Vazquez won eight service points allowing Bogota to take a 23-13 edge.

“I knew that the score was going to be tight, so I had to do my best to make sure that we would win,” Vazquez, a senior setter, said. “My team, we didn’t let any of our mistakes get into our head. We knew that if we wanted to win, we had to work hard and don’t let anything get into our heads.

“We learned a lot from the regular season game. We watched a lot of film of them and we applied it to the game. We lost to them last year (in the final), so we made sure that we were going to win.”

Bogota suffered no letdown in the second game with senior middle blocker Lelia Ksiyer collecting seven of her 16 kills and Nylene Mateo picking up six of her 12 kills.

“In the second game, we made sure that all of the hard work and dedication that we put into practice, we put into the game,” Vazquez said. “We made sure to keep it up in the second game because we didn’t want them to win.”

Junior Kelly Waterman finished with 15 assists for Verona and Hunter Coppola, a senior middle blocker, had seven kills and three blocks.

“There were some mistakes that we made, little things here and there, but we played tough,” Mateo, a junior outside hitter said. “We showed a lot of energy on the court because we just really wanted to win this year.”

” We would’ve been disappointed if we played anyone but Verona in the final, and that’s no disrespect to anybody,” DiRupo said. “Not taking anything away from them, they’re a great team. When we played the first time, we felt that we made a lot of mistakes and that’s uncharacteristic of us. Our thing today was to just minimize our mistakes and just play hard.”