BELCHERTOWN — Coming into the Belchertown girls volleyball team’s match with Lenox on Tuesday night, Orioles senior captain Vivian Ross needed just one assist to reach 1,000 for her career – which has spanned four years including this fall.

Although it was essentially guaranteed she would reach the milestone (Ross averages 26 assists per game), it didn’t make the moment any less special. Belchertown’s first point of the game came on a Gianna Picardi kill. Ross set Picardi up perfectly to come in for a swing and drive the ball into the newly renovated Orioles court, putting Ross at exactly 1,000 assists.

As the public address announcer notified the crowd of the feat, the Belchertown faithful rose to its feet to give Ross – who stepped behind the service line to deliver the next point with a giant smile – a well-deserved standing ovation.

Despite Belchertown dropping the match, 3-1 (25-11, 25-12, 23-25, 25-13), to the Millionaires, Ross etched her name into Orioles volleyball lore.

“That felt pretty good,” Ross said of the moments following assist No. 1,000. “I’ve been on this team for so long, it’s such an accomplishment. Working with everybody, I couldn’t do this without them obviously. My passers getting me the ball, my hitters and everybody putting the ball down. Every year my teammates have been the best.”

When Belchertown head coach Chris Shea was the girls junior varsity coach a couple of years back, he was able to witness the growth of Ross as a player and person. A year ago, Ross was dishing out assists to then-senior Ava Shea, Chris’ daughter.

Watching Ross blossom on and off the court is why Tuesday’s milestone meant a lot to Chris as well. Ross has become like another member of his family, and a player he emphasized is going to leave a big hole when she graduates in the spring.

“She got a lot of those assists with my daughter last year, so to watch that and watch her grow up, she’s just a super important person to me,” Chris Shea said of Ross. “As a person, as a player, as a leader, she’s tough. She’s tough on me. And I need it sometimes. She wants it more than anybody. She’s the ultimate competitor, and that mindset is going to help her go far in life. She’s setting the example for our future setters on how to work hard. She’s what every coach wants.”

The match started out slow for the Orioles, as they dropped the first two sets, 25-11, 25-12, respectively. While the scores indicated a blowout, each set felt much closer.

Lenox had to work for every point, most of them coming off of long rallies that Belchertown had opportunities to win. But the Millionaires, which have won now eight straight contests after starting their season with a loss, were too much for the Orioles on Tuesday.

The early deficit was too steep a hill to climb.

“I need to get them just a little more mentally prepared to come out with the confidence,” Shea said. “When we’re confident, when we’re bouncing, when we’re challenged, we typically rise to the occasion. I was anticipating us rising tonight, but we didn’t out of the gate and you can’t go down to a great team like Lenox.”

That confidence Shea spoke of was apparent in set No. 3.

Belchertown raced out to an early 5-1 advantage, and kept the lead at four until a Melina David service run buoyed it to seven, 15-8. Lenox would storm back to knot things up at 21 apiece, but the Orioles never cracked. They went on to win the set 25-23, looking exactly like the team Shea knows can show up on a regular basis.

“That’s how we play,” Shea said. “That’s the team we can be, which I think is a contender in our league, a contender to compete in Western Mass. and a contender in the state somewhere. I know we’re good enough. We’ve got the pieces, we just need to put it together. You gotta have a goldfish mentality and move on to the next play whether the last one was good or bad. All those things that tend to be ‘coach speak,’ they’re actually true.”

After dropping the fourth set and ultimately the match, Belchertown’s varsity and junior varsity gathered around the net with posters and balloons for Ross to celebrate her achievement.

Ross mentioned how much the Orioles program and her teammates have meant to her over the last four years of her life. And on Tuesday, she was able to see that they indeed feel the exact same way about their captain.

“I just wanna show the team what it means to be a leader, and how we can make this team the best it can be,” Ross said, referring to what she hopes to get out of the rest of the season. “I know I can be hard on them sometimes, but I just want the best for them. I know they can be even better every single day.”

Belchertown (4-4) hosts Chicopee on Thursday evening at 6 p.m.