Barrington Swept in Boys Volleyball

Boys’ volleyball coach Christian Lambert had plenty to say after his Barrington High squad was swept 3-0 in the Division II state championship match Thursday night.

Lambert just didn’t expect to have to make the comments he did about his previously undefeated team’s loss to Pilgrim High.

“It was our worst match of the season,” the head coach said. “By far.”

“I don’t want to stand here and make excuses,” Lambert said. “We just didn’t play. We made mistake after mistake after mistake.”

“We couldn’t pass the ball in the first set. We couldn’t get the ball to the front row after serve receive. And then when that started clicking, we made setting errors. And then when we starting setting, we made hitting errors.”

“We couldn’t play defense all night,” he said. “We were scrambling, scrambling, scrambling. That’s just the way it goes.”

“They played hesitant all night,” Lambert said. “They were playing safe. They were trying to see how many mistakes they could get away with. The mistakes just started piling up.”

The scores were 25-11, 25-20 and 25-21. Only at 3-0 in the third set did the Eagles lead all night. Whenever Barrington managed to get back into a tie, Pilgrim seemed to have the answer to stay in front. Or Barrington made a mistake.

The first set was Barrington’s worst. Pilgrim jumped out to a 9-1 lead and built on that margin to roll to a demoralizing loss for Barrington.

Lambert agreed that his squad simply did not seem ready to play. That first set kind of foretold the story of the night at the Providence Career and Technical Academy.

Indeed, Lambert said, Barrington’s worst match of this season before Thursday night came on the same court against Central High.

Barrington dropped behind 7-3 in the second set before rallying to cut the lead to 7-6. Pilgrim then pulled away again to build a 15-9 lead before the Eagles scrapped back to cut the margin to one point, 19-18, on a kill by captain Robbie Cardin. But Pilgrim then outscored Barrington 6-2 the rest of the way to take the second set.

At 3-0 in the third set, it looked like Barrington might make a comeback. But Pilgrim ripped off the next five points to take the lead. The teams then traded points to take the score to 12-12.

Pilgrim then scored 3 points in a row, which Barrington matched to tie the set at 15-15. The Patriots then went on a 6-1 run to take a 21-16 lead.

Barrington cut the lead to 3 points twice in the final set, 22-19 and 23-20. But that was the closes the Eagles got.

Pilgrim scored 2 of the final 3 points and won on a kill in the deep corner that sent Barrington off the court with a second straight loss in a Division II championship game.