By Michael Letendre

BRISTOL – Every scholastic volleyball program needs an athlete like Bristol Eastern senior Sage Scarritt on its team.

You know the type: highly intelligent, multi-faceted, and a leader – on and off the floor – that doesn’t mind sharing the limelight.

That’s Scarritt in a nutshell and when the Lancers came-from-behind to beat Bristol Central three games to two last Thursday, all those attributes came to the forefront.

The senior, who is getting her first real chance in the Eastern rotation  this year, was a major factor as she and her teammates put it all together against an extremely talented squad from Central – turning in a huge 15-10 fifth set to finally topple the Rams.

“We played as a unit,” said Scarritt about the Eastern victory. “We’ve been wanting games like this all season. We’ve been stressing about not playing at our hardest and in the final seconds [against Central], that’s what made us come together and made us win.”

“We needed each other, we needed everyone on the bench and everyone on the court to be together.”

Eastern is 10-0 for a reason this year and Scarritt has been a major contributor to that success.

She’s still one of the state leaders in hitting percentage, ranked 14th in Connecticut with a clip of .288 which is just a bit better than All-State teammate Zoe Lowe (.259).

Against Central in the five-set victory, Scarritt was clutch at the service line with three aces, while also dropping a career-high 11 kills against the Rams.

She also contributed five digs and even bumped up a pass for an assist.

“Sage has been doing a great job all season,” said Eastern coach  Stefanie Reay after the Central win. “Her hitting percentage is super high…the highest on our team. But she really felt it in her heart and she came out and did everything she could for these girls and for herself.”

“I have a group of eight seniors and they definitely wanted it.”

But the senior laden team had its hands full the entire match against Central, attempting to stave off all the elements to pull out the victory.

In that match, the experience factor went to Scarritt and the Lancers, and in the end, they turned around a 10-8 fifth set deficit to nab the win. That senior core rose to the occasion. 

“It was definitely nerve-racking and terrifying,” said Scarritt of the situation. “This is my first year playing on varsity so it was really special to all of us and we’re seniors. This is our last shot and we did what we needed to do.”

But Scarritt isn’t a stranger to big games or stressful situations as she’s been a major contributor to the girls basketball program at Eastern since her freshman campaign.

And year by year, her improvement on the court has been more than evident.

As a freshman, she played in all but four games, averaging 3.2 rebounds-per-game.

Her sophomore season, Scarritt averaged a healthy 5.3 points, 7.0 rebounds and a blocked shot-per-game.

Last year as a junior, Scarritt – who probably deserved an All-Conference nod – put together 6.0 points, a team-leading 8.8 rebound-per-game total, including a career-high 19 rebounds at Hall – along with 2.2 assists and 1.7 steals-per-game.

In the end, her play on the volleyball court – just like on the hardwood – isn’t any real surprise as the model teammate has helped make two programs at Bristol Eastern very successful – especially against Bristol Central.

“It really just shows how hard we work together and practice every single day,” said Scarritt of the volleyball’s team success. “We couldn’t do it without our coach and all of our teammates together.”