The Cranston East girls’ volleyball team has rarely found its back against the wall this season, compiling an undefeated record to this point, but Tolman gave the ’Bolts all they could handle.

The Tigers stole the first set, 25-22, on the road to take some air out of the gymnasium. East held serve, though, dominating the second and third sets, 25-12 and 25-15, to take command of the momentum. It dropped No. 5 Tolman, 25-18, in the fourth set to secure a semifinals matchup with Juanita Sanchez.

“I’m not taking anybody for granted,” East head coach Meaghan McGonagle said. “We knew that Tolman had come off a big win [Wednesday against West Warwick], some of our kids were there, they saw it. We know Tolman always has a good team. We definitely need to push as hard as we can.”

East suffered from miscommunication across the court during the first set, allowing Tolman to jump out to a 15-14 lead and never look back. Amanda Hay and Victoria Bowry kept the ’Bolts within range, cutting the deficit to two, but the Tigers caught fire towards the end.

A couple of vicious kills, compounded by East miscues, allowed Tolman to grab the first set after a Hay service error.

East would go into the phone booth in between sets, coming out as the undefeated version of itself that had run roughshod over Division II all season.

“It was really tough, because it’s tough to play in a different routine,” McGonagle said. “We came out without a normal warmup, and the girls really needed to get focused. Whenever you play in a playoff game, and when you go into games undefeated, you have huge, huge, huge targets on your back and we don't take anything for granted. It was a little bit of nerves, a little bit of adjustments.”

The ’Bolts took a 4-0 lead out of the gate and never allowed Tolman to jump ahead. They answered the Tigers every time they attempted to close the gap, even responding to an 8-8 tie with four consecutive points.

Bowry, Hannah Mason and McKenzie Richards boomed the ball all over the floor at will. Chelsea Asare got in on the action as well, extending the East lead to 14-9 with a kill of her own.

Samantha Levy closed out Tolman in the second set, ripping off four aces in a seven-point span to send East to a characteristic 25-12 victory.

The third set would go back and forth, with Tolman taking leads of 10-8 and 11-10, but East used its strong net presence and pinpoint serving to get on top and stay there. Hay registered back-to-back kills to give her side a 16-14 lead, while Mason’s two service aces in a row forced a Tolman timeout.

“We adjusted our lineup to go with who was hot at the beginning with serving, that’s something that we haven’t done before,” McGonagle said. “We saved a few things for the playoffs, but we definitely wanted to make sure we were looking at who was our best server, who was playing and where to start them off so we could get the most right off the start in each and every game.”

The break didn’t do much for the Tigers as East picked up where it left off. Tolman committed a few errors down the stretch, and East went in for the kill. Another Levy ace locked up the 25-15 win for East, putting it in control heading into the potentially decisive fourth set.

Following Hay’s service ace to give the ’Bolts a 2-1 lead early in the fourth set, they never trailed again. Richards anchored the front line and deceived Tolman with a combination of soft and misdirected returns.

Tolman would tie the score at 13, but East churned out a 12-5 run to avoid any more hints of an upset. Richards, Hay and Mason all chipped in to shut the Tigers down, clinching a spot in the semifinals for the top team in Division II.

From here on out, East will be very familiar with the rest of its potential opponents. All four semifinal squads remaining in the Division II playoffs have come from the ’Bolts’ subdivision, Division II-North. Most notably, No. 4 North Smithfield upset Mt. Hope, the top seed out of the South, in the quarterfinals.

“It’s funny, because we’ve always said the past few years the southern division has been that way where most of the teams have come out of the southern division and gone into the playoffs, and this year it’s the northern division,” McGonagle said. “It’s great to see. It’s great to see that we have been playing against the biggest competition all year.”

The Cavaliers took the ’Bolts to five sets back on Sept. 20, but East swept them in their second contest on Oct. 20 in Cranston. East and Juanita Sanchez played their semifinal tilt on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. at Rhode Island College, but results were unavailable at press time.

“I’ve been watching Juanita, this will be our third game and that’s one of the not-great things about having an all-northern [semifinals] because we play them a couple of times and they definitely want to win,” McGonagle said. “Juanita is a very good team. I’ve talked about that since the first day we played them. They’ve got tremendous athletes and we've got a lot of work to do before Wednesday.”