After rallying from a one game deficit to win its semifinal match, the Cranston West volleyball team found itself needing the same comeback in Saturday’s Division II championship.

It looked like the Falcons might do it, but the comeback trail hit a pothole in game three – and then a heart-breaking roadblock in game four.

Two-time defending champion Exeter/West Greenwich stole West’s lead and momentum in game three to take a 2-1 lead. Then in game four, the Falcons thought they had forced a decisive fifth set when an EWG hit landed out of bounds on game point, but that call was reversed when one of the line judges said the ball was deflected. That made it 24-22, and a deflated West squad didn’t win another point as the Knights surged to a 26-24 victory and the championship.

For the Falcons, it was a tough-to-swallow finish.

“There are a lot of ifs, but that’s the way it goes in a close game,” said West head coach Tom Ferri. “It’s always tough to lose, but I have to be proud of the girls and the way they played. They hustled. They really played right down the wire.”

The Falcons and Knights both went 15-3 in the regular season, and they split their two meetings, a sign that Saturday’s championship would be a nail-biter. It didn’t disappoint. The action went back-and-forth all day, with dozens of long points punctuating it.

EWG won the first game 25-12 but could never breathe that easy again. West came back to win game two 25-17 before the Knights rallied from an early six-point deficit to take game three 25-23.

In game four, West responded and built a five-point lead at 17-12. When the Knights won six in a row to go back in front 19-18, the Falcons won four straight on three kills by Courtney Salisbury and another by Ailis Hanley. After two errors made it 22-21, the Falcons got kills by Hanley and Courtney Lambrese to get to game point at 24-21.

On that point, EWG’s Jennifer Donnelly rose for a hit on the left side and angled it toward the back right corner of the court. It landed well out of bounds, and West celebrated. But just as the Falcons started packing up to switch sides, officials noticed that the left side judge on the EWG side was signaling that the ball had been deflected. The head official went with the call and gave the point to EWG.

Ferri didn’t want to comment on the ruling. But right or wrong, it was jarring for the Falcons.

“It’s a total shift in emotions,” Ferri said. “You go from thinking we won the fourth game and forced a fifth game, and all of a sudden, the game’s not over.”

The Knights took their new life and ran with it. A tip by Donnelly on the next point made it 24-23 before Ashley Orwitz blasted an ace to tie the game. The Falcons took a timeout, but on the next point, Donnelly bumped a free ball with her back to the net and found an open spot in the middle of the court, putting EWG in front 25-24.

Donnelly than smashed a kill, and just like that, it was over. The Knights celebrated their third championship in a row.

“We were still backs against the wall,” said EWG coach Josh Bednarczyk. “Anything could have happened. We just said one point at a time.

The Knights won last year’s championship in five games over Cumberland and went to four games to beat Burrillville the year before, so they were no strangers to the intensity of a close title match. While the Falcons landed 36 kills in the match, EWG’s defense kept that total from being higher. The other major key was that the Knights amazingly didn’t commit a service error all day.

“We could have left here today either way,” Bednarczyk said. “We executed as a team. That’s kind of what we’ve been doing all year. We didn’t miss a serve all day. That’s obviously a big point. Missing serves can be a big rally-killer. To go all day at this level, under this pressure, and not miss one is huge.”

For the Falcons, the memory of game four lingered, but Ferri also saw game three as a turning point. West had the momentum from game two and built an 11-5 lead with some of their best offense of the day. Hanley, Salisbury and Lambrese all had kills to power the surge.

But when Orwitz stepped to the service line after a Donnelly kill, the Knights got right back into the game, winning nine points in a row to go up 14-11. West continued to fight, but EWG never trailed again in the game.

“Game three, we had the momentum, we had just gotten a few big kills,” Ferri said. “Everything was going our way. And then, [Orwitz] had a run. We had trouble returning her serve. They went ahead by three or four. We came back but it wasn’t enough. I thought that may have been the turning point in the whole match. We win game three, and then they have to win two in a row.”

As it was, the Knights prevailed, but there wasn’t much to complain about in West’s overall effort. The Falcons played some of their best team defense of the season, with digs, blocks and impressive saves throughout the match. The attack stood out, too. In game four, the final 12 points West scored all came on kills.

“Very evenly-matched,” Ferri said. “Defensively, I thought they were a little bit better than we were. Hitting-wise, I thought we may have an edge and I thought we were a better blocking team. The gameplan coming in was to block their middle because that’s primarily where they go. I thought we did a good job of it. Our blockers did well and we scored a lot of points from our middle too.”

Ultimately, it just wasn’t enough, but the season was still a special one for the Falcons. After two tough years in D-I, West made itself right at home in D-II and almost brought home the school’s first volleyball championship.

West will bid farewell to seniors Salisbury, Hanley, Alexa Jillson, Carlotta Trapassi, Nicole Matarese, Asia Baez, Kelly McDonough and Gianna Procaccini.

“I told them at the beginning of the year that I thought they had a special team and we had a chance to go all the way,” Ferri said. “We tried to work on our deficiencies as we went along in the season. They battled it out in the finals. Other than winning it, that’s as far as you can go. I’m very happy with the way they played and the way they matured. Just a great group of girls. It was really a special season.”