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Volleyball: Bridgewater-Raritan wins Skyland Tournament championship

Andy Mendlowitz
@andy_mendlowitz

They entered with heartbreak. They left as conference champions.

The Bridgewater-Raritan High School volleyball team proved that momentum means, well, little. A day after dropping three close matches to fellow state powers, the Panthers shook off the sting and beat Hillsborough, 25-15, 25-23, in the Skyland Conference Tournament final Thursday.

The matchup featured Somerset County heavyweights as the top-seeded Panthers repeated as champs, both times defeating the Raiders in the final. Prior to that, Hillsborough had captured three straight titles. This year, they split matches in the regular season.

“It’s fun,” Panthers coach Corey Romanak said. “It’s always nice when you have a good, competitive rivalry in-conference. So we always look forward to playing Hillsborough. It was a great match.”

On Wednesday, Bridgewater-Raritan dropped three-set matches to Bloomfield, Harrison and St. Joseph (Met.) in a quad meet. Romanak, who won a national championship while playing at Springfield College, knows by now not to get frazzled. In college, he learned lessons away from volleyball. An English professor had studied Buddhism, and the professor passed on some of the principles that Romanak soaked up. He said that, “I don’t really go up or down too much with emotion."

“I always preach about staying in the moment,” he said. “We don’t have time to dwell on the negatives. I said, ‘Listen, it bothers me. I’m as upset as you are about losing. But there’s a time and place to discuss and to be reflective about those losses, and now’s not the time. We have to play in the (conference tournament). We have to defend the title.’ … We responded, and I think that really speaks volumes to their character and maturity of how to handle a situation like that.”

Bridgewater-Raritan, the defending Tournament of Champions winner, jumped to a lead in the first game and cruised to the victory. But in the second game, Hillsborough held a 16-8 advantage. The Panthers rallied, but trailed 23-22 before pulling it out on a 3-0 run.

“At no point do I think that we played poorly,” Romanak said. “I just think that Hillsborough matched our intensity and really outplayed us for a couple points. But then down the stretch, I just think that we maintained that level of intensity and I think that was what really kind of started to propel us toward the end. It just came down to relentless defense.”

Senior outside hitters Kevin Ros and Tim Fieseler had big games,  and sophomore middle blocker Jack Whelan got a key late block. For the match, Ros had nine kills and 12 digs and Fieseler had 12 kills. Senior middle blocker Andrew Amerman added two digs, three kills and four blocks, and junior libero Tim Schwed chipped in with seven digs.

Bridgewater-Raritan should get another challenge today in the Super Six Showcase at St. Joseph in Metuchen, where Romanak graduated from in 1994. The Panthers are slated to play East Brunswick, St. Joseph, Sterling and Southern Regional, which the Panthers beat in last season’s Tournament of Champions final.