It's redemption time for St. Raphael

PROVIDENCE — The St. Raphael girls volleyball team learned its lesson from last fall. There would be no repeat.

Up 21-13 and four points away from a sweep, the Saints didn’t panic when they dropped three straight points. Being up 2-0 in a title series, then losing three straight sets can mess with your head, but it helped St. Raphael on Sunday afternoon.

“We knew what we had to do in the third set. We were telling each other just play our game,” St. Raphael’s Paige O’Brien said. “We’ve been here before, but we were going to make up for it this year.”

The Saints calmed down and closed out Block Island for a 25-19, 25-22, 25-19 win in the Division III championship game. It was the first title for the Saints and a really good way to help bury the loss in last year’s final.

“I’m still not over it, but this helps,” said SRA middle Victoria Adegboyega, who had seven of her nine kills in the final set, the last one to clinch the title. “It’s just something you never get over. This? This helped.”

“We knew we had this game. There were no nerves,” said Madison Nault, who had 17 assists in the win. “We were ready to go and just wanted to take this home with us today.”

Block Island, with only 29 girls in the school and nine on the team, didn’t have the experience. Sunday’s title match was the school’s first in any sport and the big gym and bigger crowds didn’t help ease the nerves.

That was the situation St. Raphael was in last year. On Sunday, it looked relaxed and played a step better than it did in Wednesday night’s 3-1 semifinal win over Central.

In the first set against Block Island, the Saints didn’t let a scorekeeper’s error that robbed them of one point and gave Block Island two affect them. They opened a lead that the Hurricanes never really threatened and Allajah Perryman closed the set with two aces for the 25-19 (but really 26-17) win.

The second was the closest of the day. Block Island led, 21-19, when Nault stepped to the serving line and three hitting errors, an ace and a kill by Tatyana Vicente put the Saints up, 24-21. After a hitting error of their own, Adegboyega’s emphatic kill put them up, 2-0, just like last season against Rogers.

“We’ve been talking about it leading up to here,” O’Brien said. “We were excited and knew what we had to do.”

The Saints left no doubt. The past was the past, the demons were exorcised and the trophy that escaped them last year was coming home with them on Sunday.

“We’re going to get that banner up there,” Nault said. “It’s going to be awesome. We did that and it feels great.”