Lehi Sports
6A Tournament: Pioneer volleyball claims the title
Beky Beaton / Lehi Free Press
The Lehi boys volleyball team wasn’t awarded the No. 1 seed until the final rankings of the season, but the Pioneers proved they deserved it as they prevailed over last year’s winner Bingham in five games on Thursday night (May 7) at UVU’s UCCU Events Center.
It was Lehi’s first championship in the sport in just its third year of UHSAA sanction. Adding extra intrigue to the story, the Pioneers won only four games two years ago in the sport’s initial season, and the Miners earned a narrow victory over Lehi in the semifinals last year and went on to win the trophy.
The title match was an epic battle between the classification’s top two teams and displayed some of the best volleyball you’ll ever see at the high school level.
The squads went back-and-forth in the first set, a game featuring multiple ties in which neither team ever led by more than Bingham’s victory margin of three points at 25-22.
In the second set, the Pioneers maintained a narrow advantage most of the way until the Miners pulled even at 19. However, kills from junior outside hitter Ashton Shewell, senior outside hitter Kyson Ririe and junior middle blocker Ben Anderson helped Lehi to close it out 25-21.
The momentum shifted in the third game as Bingham stayed in front by as many as five points at multiple times, but the Pioneers refused to go away and came back to tie the tally at 23-all. However, the Miners scored on a kill and a block to get a 2-1 margin in the match.
Facing elimination, Lehi rallied in the fourth set. After the teams exchanged the first few points, the Pioneers slowly pulled away until senior outside hitter Jonny Dustin served for nine straight points to create a huge gap at 22-7.
In addition, throughout the tournament but especially in this game of the title match, junior setter Ty Reynolds put on a master class for his position.
He kept the Bingham defense on edge throughout as he constantly changed the direction of his passes, set up different players, used short and long sets and occasionally took a swing or made a block himself.
The communication was silent and seamless between him and his hitters, and they all delivered on their chances. It was high-level volleyball under intense pressure. The players pumped each other up as the adrenaline surged and some of them turned around and stoked up the crowd as well.
The Miners pulled their best player partway through the run, presumably to rest him for a final push, but they were still able to reduce the deficit by a few points before Lehi closed out the game 25-13 on a cresting wave of emotion.
With Ririe at the service line, the Pioneers scored the first four points of the tiebreaker fifth set. Shewell got it started with a tip-down placement kill followed by a block from Shewell and Anderson, another Shewell kill and a Ririe ace.
Lehi led the whole way. Bingham got as close as two points, but the Pioneers finished the job on a hard kill by junior middle blocker Thomas Wood to close out the match with a 15-11 triumph in the final game.
Shewell concluded the contest with 25 kills, 20 digs and 14 serve-receives. Dustin added 17 kills and 17 digs while Ririe added 12 kills and an eye-popping 38 serve-receives. Wood tallied 12 kills as well.
Reynolds served up an astonishing 65 assists to go with 13 digs and two solo blocks. Junior libero Rigden Hansen contributed 14 digs with 17 serve-receives.
“Wow, what a moment,” said Coach Kolby Shewell. “This team battled in this five-set thriller. It went back and forth and every single player made huge impacts. I’m so proud of these boys and this team. They are like a family. They trust each other and that makes them really hard to beat.”
Ashton Shewell said as much himself. “We stayed together and played for each other. We were never disconnected.”
He also admitted there was a little extra incentive to beat Bingham because of what happened in the tournament last year, but that wasn’t the main reason that the team found an extra gear after some unearned adversity led to dropping the third set.
“We knew that we had to lock in better and figure out how to get kills around their defense,” he said. “Once we got the final point in the fourth set, I knew we weren’t going to let go.”
Dustin is one of just three seniors on the team and wasn’t even around a year ago as he moved here from Las Vegas in between seasons.
“I knew this was my one shot and I made an instant connection with the team,” he said. “It is a family. I tried to bring energy offensively and to be reliable on defense, but every player gave his all to help us be successful.”
Reynolds concurred. “We share a brotherhood that no other team has,” he said. “We bonded on and off the court. We all stayed connected and that was what made the difference.”
