North Providence boys volleyball team ready for next step
· Yahoo Sports
NORTH PROVIDENCE — Caden Hicks has some great friends.
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His North Providence classmates forced him onto the volleyball team last season. It was the best thing that happened to the senior. He fell in love with it and the Cougars, in just their fourth season, are better for it.
Hicks sparked a fifth-set rally against Mt. Hope, the Division III defending champions, from the middle of North Providence’s lineup. The Cougars clawed their way back in the decisive frame after trailing by four points at the start.
But the hosts seized control and put the rest of the league on notice.
The 3-2 (16-25, 25-18, 13-25, 25-22, 15-11) triumph is the best win in North Providence’s young history. It paints a target on the Cougars’ back as the team to beat in the playoffs in a few weeks. The postseason will come eventually, North Providence is currently the No. 2 seed in the league, but Hicks is just enjoying Wednesday night’s theatrics.
“The friends I made along the way,” Hicks said of how he started playing. “Last year they told me to try out, and I just had a love for it. And this is where we are now.
“We had to come out and be aggressive. We worked through [the deficit], we played as a team, as a family and came through in the end.”
Mt. Hope soared at the start of the fifth set with a 5-1 lead, but then Hicks subbed into the middle and shifted the momentum. NP knotted the match and then took an 8-6 advantage after consecutive kills from Hicks. It was a lead they wouldn’t surrender as Hicks finished with 14 kills, five blocks and four assists in the victory.
North Providence also rallied from a 17-12 deficit in the fourth set.
“That fifth set blows the fourth set out of the water,” Timileyin Durojaye said. “My heart is racing and I’m usually a calm person, but this is a heart-racing [match]. Last year they stopped us in the playoffs too, so it feels amazing to stuff them back.”
Durojaye managed a dozen kills and four blocks in the middle. The two seniors – Durojaye and Hicks – are the winning formula for North Providence. The play and the team’s intensity doesn’t drop when one of them is out and together North Providence held off the Huskies.
“We came here to play,” Toprak Kalakci said. “We knew this team was good and we had to do something different to beat them. We came together as a team and the teamwork paid off.
“This is our best season over these four years and we just want to keep making history for our school.”
It isn’t just the two middles helping North Providence to this standout spring either. John Gartsu, who supplied eight kills and two aces, provided plenty on the outside for the Cougars. The senior had two kills in the fifth set that keyed North Providence’s lead.
“We reset after every single set,” Durojaye said. “We’re back to zero and we know we can win. We’re better players and we hit faster — that’s the mindset that we kept.”
North Providence, like many programs in D-III, is in its infancy in the sport. The division is great for development and sustainability for schools. The Cougars went winless in 2023 and snagged just five victories a year later. But nine wins last year marked considerable improvement as North Providence reached the Final Four. Now the Cougars are eyeing more than just a semifinal appearance.
“This here was a statement game,” Hicks said. “We’re here to win, we have love for the game and we picked ourselves up. Every time we made a mistake, every time we dropped the ball, shanked the pass, lost the hit out of bounds, we picked each other up. We just had to come together as a family, hit the ball down and work through it.”
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Score of North Providence vs. Mt. Hope boys volleyball game May 13 2026