The scoreboard will tell you that #1 Alleghany High School swept Carroll County 3-0 (25-15, 25-13, 25-19) in the Semi-final of the Three Rivers District Volleyball tournament Monday night.
Alleghany will now host James River High School on Wednesday night as the Cougars look to add the Tournament title to their regular season crown 👑.
In a season where the conversation has been about how young the Lady 👩 Cavaliers were, the team actually became even younger due to a trio of players being unavailable for various reasons.
Ali Wright, Corrie Delp and Alyssa Lawson were all not in the Gymnasium, for three different reasons. Veteran Head Coach Cindy Edwards filled the void by calling up three players from the Junior Varsity team. Brealeigh Love, Leigha Harrad and Katie Beasley made the trip up and over to AHS in the place of the missing players.
Carroll County (12-10, 7-5) was in for an uphill climb against a 21-3 team that has not lost in almost two months before the roster changes. The story went from David vs Goliath to one where David wasn’t allowed to use his stones.
The team was also having to play a veteran team in the least opponent friendly Gymnasium in the District. With all of the obstacles listed above, the Lady Cavaliers played hard enough to leave their Coach pleased.
” We came up here and had to face a good team with a great setter,” Edwards said. ” I wanted to play hard for me and they certainly did that tonight.”
The new line-up still had one more twist in that Faith Nicholson was tasked with playing the Libero position as Callie Harris slid over to fill the spot vacated by Wright. Add the fact that Sophomore had rolled her ankle earlier in the day.
In the opening set AHS raced out to a 6-0 lead but CCHS answered with 3 Kills and one Ace from Senior Aza Petty to cut the lead to 8-6. The next Cougar run was 10-3 but the Cavs tried to answer again. This time it was a Brooke Webb Kill and a Harris Ace that made it 18-12 but CCHS would not get any closer in the 25-15 setback.
The second set mirrored the first one as Alleghany jumped out to a 9-2 lead. Carroll County strung together a 4-0 run 🏃♂️ to pull within 17-12. Petty added a Kill and Maddie Hyatt a service Ace to give the team some hope.
AHS added an 8-1 closing run to their 9-2 opening run, closing out the set 25-13.
Down 2-0 and facing a long, long ride home, the Lady 👩 Cavaliers showed up in the third and final set in a big way. The crowd was getting louder and the Cougars were swinging harder but Carroll County did not flinch.
For the third straight set, Carroll County fell into a deep hole. Down 9-3, the teams played out the rest of the match at 16-16. Not only did they play it even, the points came from all over the court.
Petty swung away as she had all night. Harris tried to play a role that was a reach for her but managed well. Laiken Burnett was tasked with setting to a different group of players but didn’t slow down.
Nicholson added an Ace, Arizona Thompson a Kill as did Raylee Goins.
The team closed to within 24-19 after saving three set points before the Cougars sealed the deal, 25-19.
The loss does end the Three Rivers District portion of the post season but the Lady 👩 Cavaliers now turn their focus on the Class 3 Regional tournament. The team landed the #7 seed in the 10 team tournament and will host a play-in game on Saturday afternoon against the #10 seeded team.
A victory on Saturday will send Carroll County to the #2 seed at the beginning of next week.
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While it’s not typical for a Game story, the photo I selected is of the Families that committed six hours on a work day, including ones that didn’t have much advance notice that their Daughters were playing.
Kudos across the Board !
A.S.P.N on The Hill 