GLASTONBURY — The RHAM High volleyball’s team’s march to its fourth straight Class M title was interrupted Saturday by a word from coach Tim Guernsey.

And they weren’t complimentary words.

“In the second game, he called a timeout and Coach got in my face, he got into Kara Trippel’s face and he got into Alicia Trippel’s face,” RHAM’s Chloe Rishell said. “He said our passing was terrible. We weren’t reading the ball.

“And we’re the type of players that when you start screaming at us, we’re going to start playing better.”

Apparently, a motivated RHAM player is a dangerous player. And a championship player.

RHAM overcame a dreadful start to defeat Joel Barlow, 3-1, in the Class M finale at Glastonbury High.

RHAM dropped the first game, 16-25, and was trailing, 6-0, in the second game before Guernsey delivered a fire-and-brimstone sermon to RHAM’s back-row players.

The message worked. RHAM rallied to win the second game, 25-22, racked up the third, 25-12, and then scored the final three points to pull out a 28-26 win in the fourth and decisive game.

“Once we started passing the ball better, we started getting some kills at the net — it all fell into place,” Guernsey said. “We couldn’t have played any worse in the first game. Once the kids realized that the only place to go was up, the girls relaxed. But we had to challenge them first.”

When RHAM started to get the ball to its playmaker, Laura Smolinski, closer to the net instead of in the middle of the court, RHAM’s offensive productivity started to flourish. She wound up assisting on 35 of RHAM’s 94 points — better than one-third.

“Maybe we were a little intimidated in the first game,” Smolinski said. “But after about 20 points, that intimidation wore off. Barlow had never beaten us before and that kept us fired up.”

Most of the heat was supplied by RHAM’s weapons at the net. Jocelyn Taylor had 17 kills and freshman Sarah Veilleux and junior Kelsey Kirkpatrick each had 10 kills. Once the net players were warmed up, there was little Barlow could do about it.

“Definitely that first game was a wake-up call,” Taylor said. “We were a little nervous. But we all know what this team is capable of doing.”

RHAM specializes in pulling out the close calls and the fourth game provided the perfect example.

Taylor’s bomb at the net gave RHAM the lead for good, and then Veilleux drilled home the championship winner.

Don’t ask her how she did it, however.

“The only thing that mattered is that we scored the point,” Veilleux said. “I don’t even remember what happened.”

After all, winning close games is routine at RHAM.

“That’s what we do,” Taylor said, “We work on those situations every day in practice.”

“We left everything we had on the floor,” said Trippel, who was named the title game’s Most Valuable Player. “We were hesitant in the beginning, but as soon as we figured it out, we played well.”

Even with just two seniors remaining from last year’s championship team, RHAM kept on buzzing.

“This was so satisfying,” said Smolinski, a junior. “We were part of last year’s championship, but we really weren’t in it because it was a senior team. This one is ours.”

RHAM just didn’t follow the tradition of last year’s team, they enhanced it with its gritty comeback.

“RHAM is good, they have an aura surrounding them,” Barlow coach Stave Antal said. “I think they missed one service, and we missed a lot of services. And those points added up quickly. You can’t give a team like RHAM free points.”

“It’s such an emotional boost when your opponent commits an error, especially in rally scoring, where every mistake means a point,” Guernsey said. “And everyone served well for us. We didn’t beat ourselves.”

That’s why the No. 1 seeded Sachems were able to finish the season with a 21-1 record, only losing to Tolland in the Central Connecticut Conference quarterfinals. Barlow, seeded No. 3 at 19-3, lost to RHAM in the finals for the second straight year.

This makeup of this year’s team, however, was completely different than last year’s champs.

“It was an emotional season,” Guernsey said. “I think I was tougher on this group than any team in the last few years. But the kids responded.”

Especially to a blistering pep talk that at least three players on RHAM’s back row never will forget.

Tim Guernsey answered the question like he’s been asked it a million time before.

No, the RHAM volleyball coach doesn’t know how many consecutive games his team has won.

Really.

“Nope,” he said, chuckling. “I have no idea. It’s for writers.”

He does, however, remember the last time the Lady Sachems lost — to Farmington in the Northwest Conference final.

In 2007.

Nearly three years and three state championships separate then and now. Fifty-three straight wins do, too.

But the streak is hardly a concern for RHAM, one of the state’s most dominant programs in any sport despite starting just eight years ago with a coach who never played the sport and in a town — Hebron — that loves its soccer.

Inside the RHAM gymnasium, there are blue banners signifying league championships and gold ones reserved for state titles. As one would expect, the only number on the gold ones is for the year, not that number of losses.

“People are going to come into the gym and they’re going to notice 2010, they won a state title,” Guernsey said. “Not that they had 10 losses or no losses.”

Nevertheless, they’ve been hard to come by at RHAM. The Sachems lost just one game (yes, game!) last season en route to their third straight Class M title. They rode big hitters in All-State selections Kelsey Welling and Tessa Smolinski, also the Gatorade Player of the Year, and a group of seven seniors well-versed in winning.

They’re gone, but in a program that’s quickly built a legacy of success, little else has changed.

Gold’s the goal. Again.

“In 2005, I had eight seniors on a team that went 18-2 and lost in the (state) quarterfinals. Then, it was six seniors (who graduated), then it was one senior, then it was this group with seven,” Guernsey said. “It’s been an every-other-year cycle.”

This season, just two seniors remain in outside hitter Chloe Rishell and middle hitter Jocelyn Taylor, the latter of whom was part of RHAM’s eight-person rotation a year ago. Like clockwork, seven juniors stand behind them, including Tessa’s sister, Laura, a setter; Kelsey Kirkpatrick, another middle hitter; and Kara Trippel, a libero.

Since they were freshmen, they “have been waiting to get into the limelight,” Guernsey said — like every other class.

“We’ve all kind of experienced it,” Rishell said of winning a state title. “But we’ve all been on the sidelines. I think the thing that is going to drive us most is we want to say we were a part of it.”

Guernsey does point to one difference this year. For the first time since he started the program in 2002 — and went 0-18 — RHAM lacks that knock-dead outside hitter in its 5-1 formation, someone who can take the ball anywhere on the net and leave a smudge mark where the floor used to be.

That moves the emphasis to defense and quicker passing, meaning RHAM will try to turn volleyball, a game essentially of mistakes, into a flawless act.

Good thing the Sachems have this perfection thing down. Even if they don’t know exactly for how long.

Earlier this year when asked about the Central Connecticut Conference girls volleyball tournament, RHAM coach Tim Guernsey was excited about having that kind of prepa­ration heading into the state tour­nament. (link)

Over the last two days, RHAM has taken care of business and finds itself playing for the tour­nament championship.

Top seeded RHAM ( 20- 0) stamped its place into tonight’s CCC title match with a workman­like 25-19, 25-19, 25-17 semi­final round victory over No. 3 Bristol Eastern (17-3).

The Sachems, who extended the state’s longest match winning streak to 49, took control after falling behind 9-4 in Game 1.

“ The last two matches, Farmington and Norwich Free Academy, we started out a little bit slow as well,” RHAM coach Tim Guernsey said. “ It’s one of those things with the seven seniors that we have that I try to let them figure out how to refocus themselves before I call a time out.

“Once we started to relax and just played things went pretty well.”

Junior Jocelyn Taylor (7 blocks, 7 kills) helped get things rolling for RHAM with three blocks and a kill as that 9-4 deficit quickly turned into a 15-11 lead as the 11-2 scoring run was punctuated by senior Tessa Smolinski, who landed a clean kill from the back row.

Taylor had four kills in Game 1 and finished things off by slam­ming home a passing error by the Lancers for a 25-19 victory.

RHAM took control in Game 2 after forcing a side-out trailing 16-15 on a point where Smolinski (8 kills) ran down a misplayed dig in the back corner of the gymnasium and later finished the multiple hit rally off with a kill.

That sparked things for the Sachems, who won six of the next seven points and 10 of the final 13 overall to make it a repeat of Game 1 with a 25-19 decision to take a 2-0 lead.

“We always talk about winning the long rallies,” Guernsey said. “There’s some statistic that says when the ball crosses the net four or five times the team that wins those rallies usually ends up win­ning the game. This time of year every point is important.”

RHAM led by as many as five points — 11-6 — in Game 3 before the Lancers got as close as 15-13 on a kill by Karissa Smith (14 kills).

The ability of the Sachems on serve/receive proved to be the difference maker as Ellie Linden (28 assists) closed things out with a pair of aces for the 2- time defending Class M state cham­pions.

Tonight, RHAM will square off against second- seeded Southington, which advanced Friday with a 3-0 semifinal vic­tory over No. 3 East Catholic, for the CCC tournament title at Manchester High School at 6 p.m.

The Lady Knights (19-1), who will be the No.1 seed in the Class LL tournament, ended Coventry’s 86-match winning streak on Oct. 28.

“ We’re looking forward to play­ing in the final,” Guernsey said. “It will be nice to have it on the road and get us out of our gym so that we’re used to the kind of atmosphere we’ll experience in the state tournament.”