Due West – After winning the first two sets of the SCISA Class A volleyball state championship match on Monday at Erskine College in pretty easy fashion, a sweep appeared to be coming the way of Laurens Academy as it tried to win a second straight championship. It didn’t quite work out that way though.
After winning the first two sets by the scores of 25-20, 25-17, the Crusaders fell to Cambridge Academy 25-18 in the third set. That led to these thoughts from LA head coach Shannon McGee to her team.
“I just had to remind them that this is not handed to you,” McGee said. “You can't make errors and play the game well. We had to get back to playing our game. We were making bad passes, not running our plays the way we needed to. I said it will be a fight to the finish.”
Laurens heeded the words of its head coach and took care of its business in the fourth set, winning 25-21 to win the match 3-1 and make it back-to-back championships.
“We’re just very thankful to do this again,” McGee said, “The girls put in a lot of hard work to win again, win the title. We had a lot of girls who are seniors and wanted to go out on top in their senior year.”
This was the fourth meeting of the season between LA and the Cougars. Laurens won the first match 3-0 before CA won the second match 3-2. The teams, who played for the state title last year as well, had to play a special game to decide the No. 1 team in Region 4. The Crusaders won that match 3-1.
McGee said her team took the court on Monday and was locked in.
“Our girls really played flawless, not making mistakes,” she said. “We were just on our game. Every single person was doing their job and doing it very well. We were just going so smoothly. All the plays we were running were working. We were just out there to play volleyball.”
Then there was the major hiccup in the third set.
“I don’t know if we thought we were going to Easy Street or what,” McGee said. "It was like bam, bam, bam! We were struggling and they started playing better. We were not doing what we were supposed to be doing.”
Senior Madison Sherman, the defending Region Player of the Year, had a tremendous all-around match for Laurens. Sherman had 20 digs, 18 kills, 20 assists and three service aces.
Sophomore Campbell Sherman finished with 24 kills, 23 digs and one ace. Junior Olivia Suttles had 32 digs.
Cambridge was led by senior Bryn Dellinger with 18 kills and 11 digs, and senior Jillian Mapes had 15 kills, 17 digs and 12 assists. Senior Lily Rudd had 21 digs and sophomore Addison Leopard had 27 assists.
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