The Rising Sun volleyball team lost to La Plata in the state semifinals Monday night, November 13, at Ritchie Coliseum in College Park. The Warriors prevailed 25-23, 26-24, 25-20. Leading 24-21 in game two, the Tigers had a golden opportunity to even the match, but La Plata reeled off five straight points to take a commanding two-game lead.
A service error and net violation enabled the Warriors to cut the deficit down to 24-23. "Since we left hideout scoring for rally scoring, volleyball is all about mistakes now," Rising Sun coach Rich Wilson said. "You try to limit your errors because they go right to the other team's bottom line. So, a miscue here, a miscue there, all of a sudden those three points have evaporated pretty quickly." La Plata took the lead early in game three and maintained an advantage throughout. "Volleyball is all about momentum," Wilson said. "When you have it, you try to keep it. When you don't have it, you try to get it back. Attitude, energy all come into play. What you try to do is get them settled down but keep their energy up. We make very few in-game adjustments. We adjusted the defense a little bit in the second and third games. But we still couldn't really stop their Number 5 (Jayci Chamberlian) coming out of the middle. We made most of our points when she and 10 (Devin Ruble) were in the back row. That's when we went on our runs. Then they came back and went on their runs when they were in the front row. It's a game of runs." Chamberlain had a match-high 13 kills and Ruble recorded 11. "I've seen video," said Wilson. "Problem with video is you can never tell the speed of the game. So I knew she could hit hard. I knew {Number] 10 could hit hard. They're kind of [former Tiger star] Breanne [Haley] type hitters. So we know what that's like. We just haven't faced it all season…We just couldn't contain them." Said senior Liz Zatalava: "We don't experience that type of level of hitters during the season. It's a shock going from what we play in the regular season to here so I think by the time we realized they were hitting so much harder and faster, it's already too late. We did a lot to adjust. I think our blocking, our passing was tremendous. It was the best game we ever played, but it just wasn't enough because we hadn't been exposed to it all season." Sophia Eckerd led Rising Sun with eight kills. "I think Sophia had sort of a coming out party tonight," Wilson said. "She started hammering the ball, finally, at the end of the season. I'm pretty proud of the group. I think we had another great season but more importantly than that, I think what we showed is it doesn't matter who you graduate, it only matters who you have coming up, who's coming back. Unfortunately, we're going to miss another six [seniors] this year." Senior Mackenzie Blevins supplied seven kills as did junior Emily Jackson. Jackson also served five aces. "I kind of just didn't overthink it," Jackson said. "I thought, 'Oh, here's a ball, there's a player, I got lines, picking a spot, and I'm hitting it'." Despite the loss, Rising Sun was content, knowing it had played to its potential and perhaps even surpassed it. "The last practice we had we talked about what people had expected out of this team," Wilson said. "We graduated probably the best senior class we ever had last year and nobody expected anything out of us. So here we are again back the next year in the state semis against a pretty good team. [Numbers] 5 and 10, we just had no answers for them. If we got them blocked a couple times then they started tipping. But we fought and came back, played hard." "I don't think we can be upset," Blevins said. "We played so well. The first game we were down like eight-10 points and we came right back up. There's no way you can be upset with the way that we played. I just feel proud." Rising Sun has won five straight region titles. "It's been awesome," Blevins said. "Each team that I've been on, obviously the first three years it was the same team, but each year we're different. The personalities, the people, the talent, the skill. But we're always good and we always work together. Just being able to be here for four years, that means a lot." Wilson was proud of the way his team battled all year, posting a second straight undefeated regular season. "We've never really focused on winning," he said. "I don't focus on winning. I focus on competing. That's one of the pillars of our culture. It's one of the things we try to do every day in practice. We want to come in and we want to compete. And we want to compete against the strongest teams we can find, but they're hard to find up in our area of the woods. If anything, what I'm really proud of this team is that they went out and competed against a level of competition they haven't seen all season. And for those of you who have played sports, you know what that's like…As long as we compete, as long as we strive to improve, it's my belief that the winning side takes care of itself in the long term." Comments are closed.
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