MANLIUS After a certain newspaper that shall remain nameless printed its volleyball regional preview capsules in last weekends edition, the Newman Comets found themselves a favorite Katy Perry song.

After reading they were the dark horse at the 2A Bureau Valley Regional, the Comets must have put the Perry ditty of the same name on a loop. But after their performance in a 21-25, 25-16, 25-18 victory over top-seeded Bureau Valley in Thursday nights championship match, maybe This Is How We Do would be the more appropriate song of the chanteuse with the ever-changing hair color.

Newman (14-17) scrapped, hustled, dove, dug, and clawed its way to victory over the Storm (27-6), which had beaten the Comets in both Three Rivers West meetings this season.

But so had No. 2 seed Riverdale, which third-seeded Newman dispatched in straight sets in Tuesdays semifinals.

Being the dark horse, that got to us, senior hitter Aubree Schmitt said, and its been motivating us all week. We figured if someone outside the team believed in us, then we could get it done.

We talked about the dark horse thing, and it pushed us this whole time, sophomore libero Mady Ferris added. The underdog role, we like to play like that, and we felt coming into this match that we could finish with a win.

Bureau Valley took control early, as the Storm reeled off the first six points of Game 1. But that was the biggest lead the Storm had all night, as the Comets kept battling back throughout that first game, then trailed only twice in the next two combined.

While BVs powerful hitting carried it to a Game 1 win, the Storm was unable to get its offense back on track consistently in games 2 & 3. That was mostly thanks to the scrappy Comets, who dominated points on out-of-system plays all match long.

It was a rough start, but the way we battled back in the first game carried over to the next two, Schmitt said. We knew if we carried that momentum over, just kept fighting and being aggressive and not giving them anything easy, they might get a little jumbled up and out of sync.

They were picking up everything in the second and third games, BV senior setter Sydney Lebahn said. I think we caught them off guard a little in the first game, but they came back strong. We tried to make plays out of whatever they gave us, but they just made more plays tonight.

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Comets embrace underdog role in upset of Storm