On paper they weren’t very different. Not much separated them on the court either.

The Cranston West and Mount St. Charles girls’ volleyball teams split their regular season series, each winning on their home court by identical 3-1 scores, and both teams finished 15-1 in the regular season, each representing the other’s lone loss. Both went on to sweep through the playoffs, losing just one combined game along the way.

It seemed preordained that the two would eventually meet for the Division II state championship and that, when they did, neither would disappoint. Saturday’s D-II title bout lived up to those expectations.

The two teams traded shots early on, with West taking game one and the Mounties rallying to take the lead with wins in games two and three. The Falcons dominated game four, 25-11, to force the rubber match, where Mount ultimately escaped with a 15-8 state championship-clinching victory.

“The girls played hard,” West coach Tom Ferri said. “They played their hearts out. I knew coming in that it was going to be a close match and it was. But Mount had just a little more left than we did at the end and they held on to win.”

West led 4-1 in game five before the Mounties bounced back to score 14 of the next 18 points to take the match. Mount’s Liz Frigon picked up a pair of aces and teammate Kelsey Lace put down two late kills, including the championship winner, to lead the Mounties. Their performances, combined with six uncharacteristic unforced errors from the Falcons, were enough to give Mount the victory.

“Unforced errors, at times, really hurt us,” Ferri said. “We made them in crucial spots and, in a high-intensity match like this, they get magnified. But you also have to consider that [Mount] is a lot better than most of the teams we faced this year. Teams like that pressure you and force you to make mistakes. You’ve got to give them credit.”

The Mounties’ game-five win came on the heels of West’s most dominating showing of the afternoon. With her team trailing 2-1 in games and facing potential elimination, Falcons senior Tori Branca hammered home a kill to break an 8-8 tie in game four. West never looked back.

The Falcons went on a 16-3 run from there, with offensive contributions from Ashley Signoriello, Ariana DeSimone, Anne Gladding and Madison Macaruso to claim the most lopsided win of the match.

“We dominated that fourth game and that showed me a lot about this team,” Ferri said. “They had just lost two in a row and they found a way to come back from that. It would have been easy for them to give it up but they fought back. That showed their character.”

West’s character was put to the test earlier in the match as well. The Falcons trailed 25-24 in game two and were involved in a long rally when Mount sent a hard-hit ball over the net. Signoriello laid out, barely getting her right arm under the ball to keep it off the floor, and popped it up to Macaruso, who found a hole in Mount’s defense with a kill.

Macaruso’s kill would have evened the score at 25-25 but, as she connected on her shot, the head official whistled Signoriello for a carry on her dive. Rather than facing a tie score, the call cost West a point and gave the game to the Mounties.

“That was a tough time to make a call like that,” Ferri said. “And I don’t like to get on the referees but that was a critical point. It was game-point and that was a game-point call. I thought we had already won the point when they blew the whistle and I didn’t even understand the call at first. That’s how late it was. If it was a carry, it should have been called sooner than that. I didn’t see it, but [the official] was right there; maybe she saw something that we didn’t.”

The call, right or wrong, was a turning point in the match. It tied the score at 1-1 in games and the Mounties turned that momentum into a 25-22 win in game three. West’s lopsided victory in game four helped make things interesting but the Falcons couldn’t sustain that fire all the through their game-five loss.

Branca led West with eight kills, two blocks and four aces in the match while DeSimone added seven kills, three aces and 16 assists. Macaruso (seven kills, nine blocks, 24 digs) and Signoriello (six kills, four blocks) both had big nights at the net and Gladding’s consistent play (two, kills, two blocks, 17 digs) helped back the Falcons’ defense.

“Branca led us in kills and I thought that Macaruso played really well,” Ferri said. “Mount is very good in the middle and she had a lot to contend with at the net. And Signoriello played really well in the back row. She covered a lot of ground and kept a lot of balls alive. They would have had a lot more kills if she didn’t play as well as she did.”

Saturday’s loss ended an impressive run for West. The Falcons went 15-1 in the regular season, losing just seven total games. The team posted 11 shutouts during that stretch and added another pair against Westerly and Barrington in the playoffs, running their streak to six consecutive shutouts before falling to Mount. It was the team’s best showing in the past decade, improving on last year’s semifinal appearance, and came within seven points of capturing the first state title in the program’s history.

“We were right there,” Ferri said. “It came down to the fifth game and even that could have gone either way. The girls played so well; I can’t say enough about them. When you have a team, all you ask is that they play hard. And they did that from the start of the season.”

West will lose a lot from this year’s team, including six starters from Saturday’s championship match. In all, the Falcons will graduate nine players from their roster: Signoriello, Macaruso, DeSimone, Gladding, Angelica Carlino, Danielle Andrade, Thyda Chhay, Taryn Carbone and Casey Conley.

“We have a lot of seniors and they’ll be missed,” Ferri said. “We knew the potential that we had this year and they knew that they could be a force. It was just a matter of them working hard to bring it to that next level and I think that they achieved that.”