Stories

Patriots keep marching on

Coming into the year, the Albemarle volleyball team wasn’t happy with the way everyone was dismissing the squad before the first serve of the season. Coach Mark Ragland understands why so many looked past his team, but notes that in the end it wound up being a good thing.

“This group of seniors have not settled for anything this season,” said Albemarle coach Mark Ragland. “I think they took it as an insult, all that preseason talk with us losing six seniors from last year. That’s what the talk should have been about because we were losing some great players, but these seniors took that personally.”

As they have all year, the Patriots rallied behind those seniors, and with some junior compliments, Albemarle was able to move past Osbourn Park in the Northwest Region semifinals to secure their second consecutive Group AAA bid with it’s 3-1 victory, 25-23, 25-19, 18-25, 25-19.

“That’s why we’ve succeeded this year, having our seniors step up at big times,” Ragland said. “Last year is last year and this year is this year. This team’s out to prove themselves.”

The Patriots built up leads early in the first two games and were able to hold off any late Osbourn Park comebacks to jump out to an early 2-0 lead.

However, with their season on the line, the Yellow Jackets took a commanding seven point lead behind some tipping to the middle of the court that caught the Patriots off guard early into game three. Park then survived a pair of surges from Albemarle to force the fourth and final game.

“One of the things we didn’t do well was rotate,” Ragland said. “We got caught out of position about seven or eight times, but fortunately we able to recover from that.”

Game four was just like game three, but with the shoe on the other foot, as the Patriots went up by as many as eight points. Osbourn Park was able to cut the deficit to three late in the game, but Albemarle won four the game’s final five points to wrap up the win.

“It was real nice to have that lead,” Ragland said. “The first team to go was going to have an easier time and you could see the pressure starting to mount on the other side of the net and we were able to extend the lead a little bit more.”

Through out the match the Patriots had their hands full with Yellow Jackets outside hitter Tori Price, but were able to counter with an outstanding performance from senior Hannah Lawson, who led all players with 22 kills. Fellow senior Abby Hendrix put up an amazing 46 assists. And for the second straight game, juniors Stephanie Strauss and Megan Napolitano − role players on last year’s state championship team, but starters this year – were able to put double digit kills as both finished with 10.

“It’s been great,” Napolitano said of the younger players getting their chance to shine. “It just feels good to have what we had from last year’s team comeback and be able to win as many games this year as last year.”

The Patriots will host Loudon Valley on Saturday in the region championship at 12 p.m.

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