Gallery by Heather Belcher
Charleston – Prior to Wednesday afternoon James Monroe and Greenbrier West had met five times throughout the volleyball season.
The Mavs held a 3-2 winning margin, but the Cavaliers owned the two biggest wins of the year in the Coalfield Conference final and the Region 3 championship match.
James Monroe trumped all those victories with a thrilling five-set win on the state’s biggest stage.
Coming off a five-set thriller Saturday in the regional championship match, the Mavericks bounced back to defeat the Cavaliers 3-2 in the quarterfinals of the State Volleyball Tournament.
“This feels great after that regional loss. That was a fun game even though it didn’t fall our way. I told them we might go five (sets today), but we weren’t going 21-19 (in the fifth set). Lets bare down and get this,” James Monroe head coach Julie Bradley said. “Greenbrier West is our rival, but they are a heck of a team. They are well coached and have good skilled players. It was just a hard fought match.”
After splitting the first two sets, James Monroe jumped out to a 12-7 led in set three. West responded with a 12-2 run, but could not pull away from the Mavericks.
Leading 21-17, James Monroe rallied to lead 24-23 before West all-stater Preslee Treadway answered with three kills and an ace to spark the Cavs to a 27-25 win.
Needing a win in set four to stay alive, James Monroe started quick and ran out to a 10-4 lead.
“Volleyball is such a crazy game of momentum. They came out and they were up. We looked a little down where we had just won a big set,” Greenbrier West head coach Joe Robertson said. “We needed some fire there. That game went back and forth and we kind of lost at the end.”
West battled back to within one point at 18-17, but a kill from Ava Pitzer and an ace from Maggie Boroski stemmed the tide in a 25-21 win.
Bradley pointed to Saturday’s tough loss as a catalyst for the win Wednesday.
“These girls were ready to go. They got home, slept on it and realized the sun came up that next day and they had one more chance. They were ready to rumble,” Bradley said. “They learned to not quit and stay focused on what they needed to do. They figure out why they are the court and what they need to do and excel to (make) the next play. They (learned) from the mistakes they made after they got home and watched it. We talked about making those decisions quicker.”
The final set to 15 (win by two) was another back and forth nail-biter with seven ties and no lead bigger than two points, but the all-important two point advantage belonged to the Mavs in the end, 16-14.
“I knew it would be a dogfight like that with them. It always is,” Robertson said. “I don’t think we played our best game. Our passing was off tonight and we got a little tight. We didn’t hit some that we could have hit.”
James Monroe has a quick turn-around and will meet two-time defending state champion Williamstown in the semifinals Wednesday night.
