Staff photo / Preston Byers Girard’s Brooke Perry reacts after winning a point during the Indians’ road victory vs. Boardman on Monday.

BOARDMAN — Monday’s season opener vs. Girard was Boardman’s to win – until it wasn’t.

The Spartans reached match point in the fourth set with several points to spare, but Girard, capitalizing on errors and sensing the shifting momentum, rallied for five consecutive points, forced a fifth set and captured its first win of the year by a score of 3-2 (25-21, 7-25, 18-25, 26-24, 15-13).

“We had to go point by point,” said Girard head coach Nicole Luklan, who earned her first win as the Indians’ coach Monday. “We get too rushed, we get too cluttered. We really sometimes just beat ourselves. It’s what happened to us on Saturday with Canfield, but today, we had to chip away point by point, kind of overcome that adversity.”

Girard convincingly won the first set of Monday’s away match after pulling away following an injury that sidelined Boardman’s Maya Flores, who missed the rest of the match. The Indians rattled off seven points in a row to take a 22-16 lead, and despite a brief rally by the Spartans, closed it out 25-21.

The second set, though, went about as poorly as it could have for Girard, which lost each of the first six points and shortly thereafter was on the losing end of 11 straight points as Boardman built a 20-4 lead.

“I think that’s when I lost my voice,” Luklan said of her reaction after the second set. “Really, [I told them] to just refocus and that they needed to get into the system and really listen to what our game plan was and to execute it. That’s what we really needed to focus on, and they did that.”

The Indians dropped the set 25-7 and lost the third set as well, with the Spartans pulling away with a string of points to increase their advantage from 10-8 to 20-11. Boardman won the set 25-18, inching closer to a 1-0 record on the season.

However, a season-opening win was not in the proverbial cards for Boardman.

The Spartans went back and forth with the Indians throughout the fourth set despite Girard often managing to stay just ahead. Boardman seemed to flip the set and the match on its head, though, with four straight points that put the Spartans, who had been tied 19-19 to up 23-19.

Following a timeout, Girard won back-to-back points before Boardman advanced to match point, with a few points to spare. Unfortunately, the Spartans did just that, committing a service error and a violation before Girard won the set-tying point. After Girard took the lead with another Boardman violation, the Indians completed the comeback with their fifth consecutive point and second set victory.

Much like the fourth set, Girard kept just out in front of Boardman for most of the fifth set, although Boardman, after falling behind 13-9, executed its own rally by winning four straight points to tie the match at 13 apiece. The Indians would not be denied, however, eking out the final two points to win the match.

“I think that we had the energy, and then as soon as we lost the energy that last set, we were done,” Boardman coach Becca Calvin said. “It was just one of those things where the energy shifted to them, and that’s where it went, and we couldn’t get it back at that point.”

The victory marks the fifth year in a row the Indians have beaten the Spartans.

Girard (1-1), which lost its season opener over the weekend to Canfield, begins Northeast 8 Conference play today at 7 p.m. at home vs. Struthers. Boardman (0-1) similarly plays new All-American Conference foe Louisville at 7 p.m. on Wednesday at home.