Socastee Boys Claims 5A Division 2 Volleyball Title
By WORTHY EVANS
Contributing Writer
Columbia - Socastee got off to a rough start in its 5A Division 2 volleyball championship match with Catawba Ridge Saturday at A.C. Flora High School. The Braves eventually dropped the set, but rallied over the next three sets to win 3-1 and claim the team’s first state championship victory.
“It’s just something to be so proud of for these boys,” head coach Gracie Hinson said. “They’ve worked their butts off the entire season. We didn’t know what to expect coming into the season, and to end up here and to win it here, it just shows the hard work they put in so far this season.”
Socastee (27-7) fell behind 9-8 in the first set, and as Copperheads’ Jaxon Hathaway served, fell to a 19-11 deficit before dropping the first set 25-17.
Hinson and the Braves didn’t like opening a state championship mass with a loss, but were determined to tighten up.
“I told the boys, we didn’t expect to win that first set, and we knew that it was going to be a tough match anyway,” she said. “We knew we had to reset and get back into the game and that’s what we did.”
Soccastee’s front row began to take advantage of Catawba Ridge’s apparent weakness in getting to balls hit to the middle of their court, and the Copperheads’ outside hitters’ tendency to kill the ball out of bounds. That strategy began to pay off. The Braves won the second set 25-18 and the third set 25-22.
“We had a miscommunication on the court,” Catawba Ridge head coach Ross Lisee said. “We’ve been facing some adversity as a team this week, overcoming certain pieces out of our lineup, but the guys really fought through it, and we got pressed a little bit in that second set and we weren’t able to respond. Socastee was a good team and we started to make a lot of errors, and we can’t have that. And that’s really where the match went south.”
The Copperheads (25-5-2) pushed hard in the fourth set, taking a 6-1 lead and later taking the set from 12-9 to 15-10. From that point it seemed that a tie-breaking fifth set would be inevitable, were it not for Socastee’s turnaround.
“Our guys have been pressed all year,” Lisee said. “We’ve been on that chopping block with teams coming for us, but I’m always confident in our guys, even when we’re behind, we’ve come back and forced sets this year and we’ve won. I thought we’d respond, unfortunately that wasn’t the case.”
The Braves won the point from Charlie Gallagher’s serve to make it 15-11, and with Preston Widner serving, Socastee took a 16-15 lead. The teams battled point for point briefly, but the Braves closed out the match and the game with a 25-22 win.
“This is kind of crazy,” Widner said. “I was on JV before varsity, and I never would have thought this… I barely played. And now I get to start, play here and we won. And I didn’t think we could (back then). I never thought we could have done this.”
One former player played a key role for the team on the bench—Hinson’s younger brother Bradley Hinson. Hinson played on the team until he graduated last year but lent emotional support to his former teammates and to his sister.
“He is my go-to person, he really is,” she said. “He was out here last year playing on the court and this year having him beside me has been a pleasure, just because I look at him and I know that he knows we’re both in this game and I honestly would not be here today without him. I really wouldn’t be here.”
