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The St. Mary’s High girls’ volleyball team rode a quick start and some great serving to their first Bay Shore Athletic League victory on Thursday, beating Holy Names High, 15-9, 15-5, 15-13. 

The Panthers (3-1 overall, 1-1 BSAL) served up 19 aces in Thursday’s match, accounting for 42 percent of their points. The rest of the offense came from the trio of Natalie Bogan, Jazmin Pratt and Martha Ryan, who combined for 32 kills as St. Mary’s simply overpowered the Monarchs. 

“Today was awesome, just unbelievable,” St. Mary’s head coach Cherise Revell said. “We’ve been working a lot on our serves in practice, and it showed today.” 

Pratt blamed an earlier loss to St. Joseph High on poor serving and said the team had some extra motivation because Thursday was the Panthers’ home opener. 

“We really wanted to start off strong in our first home game,” said Pratt, who had 14 kills and seven aces. “All our work paid off today.” 

St. Mary’s got off to a scorching start, running up a 10-0 lead in the first game. Holy Names had serious trouble passing the Panthers’ serves to their setter, either missing altogether or putting the ball right at the net where Bogan was waiting for a block. Although the Monarchs managed a seven-point run of their own to pull within 11-8, they didn’t have the firepower to overcome such a big deficit. 

The Panthers started slowly in the next two games, getting behind 2-5 and 1-4, respectively. They had no problem coming back in the second game, scoring 13 straight points to take a 2-0 lead in games, but the final game was a different story. They handed Holy Names 12 points on errors and looked as if they would need a fourth game to put the Monarchs away. 

In stepped Pratt. After two kills for points to keep her team close, she fired her jump-serve for three straight aces to put the visitors back on their heels. When another point kill by Pratt made the score 13-12 in Holy Names’ favor, the Monarchs fell apart, making two hitting errors and a bad pass to finish the match. 

“[Holy Names] just got their momentum going in the last game,” Ryan said. “But we were juiced all day, and we weren’t going to lose.”