No. 6 Green Mountain girls volleyball completes sweep of 4A Jeffco

LITTLETON — Green Mountain’s girls volleyball team has put together a historic regular season.

The Rams — No. 6 in the latest CHSAANow.com Class 4A girls volleyball rankings — wrapped up an undefeated record in the 4A Jeffco League with a 3-0 road victory over Littleton on Tuesday night. Green Mountain (21-1, 9-0 in 4A Jeffco) had already clinched it first league title since 2013 going into the conference finale.

“It feels good of course,” Green Mountain coach Melanie Watkins said after the Rams’ 17th straight victory. “My girls have been playing really well all season long. It’s nice to see them having a lot of fun and playing well together.”

Green Mountain cruised to a 25-15, 25-17, 25-20 straight-set victory to spoil Senior Night for the Lions (8-15, 2-7). Juniors Marae Reilly and Kendall Morrison dominated the net in the first set for the Rams, who only dropped one set to D’Evelyn during conference play this year.

“It think it pretty awesome,” Marae Reilly said of winning the league title. “We haven’t done it in almost 10 years. It is pretty crazy and now we have an opportunity to go to state. I’m super excited to see what we can do.”

Sophomore outside hitter Ashlynn Reilly dominated the second and third sets for Green Mountain to complete the sweep.

“It feels really good because last year we kind of struggled,” Ashlynn Reilly said of winning the league title after being runner-up to D’Evelyn in 2021. “We have had good energy and good games.”

It’s amazing the energy the Reilly sisters have had over the last three months. The two key cogs to the Rams’ girls volleyball program pulled double-duty for the majority of the Fall season. The Reilly sisters were starters on Green Mountain’s softball team.

Marae had a .302 batting average with 15 RBIs and 17 runs scored. Ashlynn led the Rams with a .419 batting average while knocking in 18 runs. The Rams (10-12-1 record) finished the softball season Oct. 8.

“It was tough,” Ashlynn admitted of playing softball and volleyball. “Sometimes we had to leave our softball games early to get our volleyball games because volleyball would be our priority, but we made it to all of our games.”

Marae and Ashlynn came into Tuesday’s conference finale with 417 combined kills for the Rams’ girls volleyball team. Marae also leads the team in total blocks this season with 50-plus.

“For a couple of years now they have been two-sport players now during the Fall,” Watkins said of the sisters. “They manage to get their schedules coordinated. Their softball coach and I communicate at the beginning of the season so we know the kind of schedule we are looking. It has managed to work well over the last two years.”

Green Mountain finishes out the regular-season when it hosts area-rival Lakewood at 6:30 p.m. Thursday. The Rams — No. 5 in the 4A girls volleyball RPI standings before Tuesday’s victory — will then wait to see where Green Mountain is seeded in the 12, 3-team regional tournaments that must be completed by Nov. 5.

“Since I’ve taken over the program we’ve been to regionals three times,” Watkins said. “I’m hoping we can make that push past regionals this year and get to that next stage.”

The 12 regional champions will qualify for the state tournament Nov. 10-12 at the Denver Coliseum.

Green Mountain is certainly a lock to host one of the 12 4A regional tournaments.

“I think we have a good group that has been able to come in and establish ourselves,” Marae said. “We’ve put us on the map.”