Volleyball: Ridge falls in semifinals to Fair Lawn
MONMOUTH JUNCTION — As the Ridge High School volleyball players gathered in the hallway after losing 25-11, 25-17 to Fair Lawn in Tuesday’s NJSIAA state volleyball semifinals, players sauntered to the table where the tournament shirts were for sale.
The back of the shirts displayed the rosters of the final eight teams. Last season, the Red Devils had a first-round exit. This spring, they won the school’s first North 2 sectional to advance to the final four. So while disappointed after the loss, they were more than happy to shell a few bucks for a keepsake of their great spring.
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“Last year, yeah we weren’t close to buying a T-shirt,” senior Janahan Ramakrishnan said. “We did our job. We made our coach proud. We made our school proud. We proved to everyone that we are a team and we can play volleyball.”
Yes, they could.
The Skyland Conference has traditional state powers like Bridgewater-Raritan, Hillsborough and Hunterdon Central. The Red Devils sometimes get overlooked. But this season, Ridge proved that they’re on the same level.
Seven seniors — Austin Gao, Tristan Hinol, Robert Long, Matt Page, Janahan Ramakrishnan, Justin Yuan and Avi Zucker — led the way.
“We’ve been building for this,” Long said. “We’ve been playing together. A lot of hard work in the offseason and we knew this is our time. We don’t have the pedigree some of the other teams have. Never making it to a sectional final. Never winning the section. I think we come into every game as an underdog. And we use that as justification just to go out there and swing as hard as we could. We had nothing to lose. No one expected anything from us. And I like to think we proved a lot of people wrong and put together one of the best seasons our program has ever seen.”
The stretch included the sectional tournament, in which third-seeded Red Devils upset No. 2 Bayonne 2-1 in the semifinals on the road. Last Friday, Ridge beat fifth-seeded Harrison 2-1 in the championship game in front of frenetic home fans.
“We never doubted ourselves and the level of play that we had,” Ramakrishnan said. “We always knew that we had a chance of making it to states. That’s always been our dream ever since freshman year and the beginning of this year. … This year, we just all came together as a team. We had great chemistry and we just picked things up game by game.”
Tuesday against Fair Lawn at host South Brunswick, Ridge just couldn’t get any sustained runs going. Seemingly, every ball bounced Fair Lawn’s way.
“It was one of those days,” Ramakrishnan said.
In the first game, Fair Lawn led the entire way and cruised to a 25-11 win. In the second game, the Cutters again led from the beginning. Ridge trailed 18-11, but cut it to 18-14, looking like it seized the momentum. But before you knew it, Fair Lawn had increased its lead to 21-14 en route to the 25-17 win.
“It just kicked the winds out of our sails,” Long said.
Ridge coach Mike Levy said making the final four was “the gravy for us.” So that’s why, despite the loss, the players had no problems buying shirts to wear with pride.
“I thought it was a learning experience all the way through for them,” Levy said. “And if they become better young men for what we’ve done, then that’s the goal. Not so much the winning or the losing.”
Long added, “All in all it was a fantastic season.”