Carlie Love of Harnett Central lunges for a dig.
(Dunn Area Sports Photo/John Lucas)
After both teams survived five-set upset bids in the second round the night before, top-seeded Harnett Central needed just three sets to take down visiting No. 2 Terry Sanford in the championship match of the All American 3-A/4-A Conference volleyball tournament Wednesday. Individual set scores were 25-20, 25-18 and 25-18.
“They’ve worked really hard,” said Harnett Central coach Ashley Gaines. “They worked really hard. They had a goal at the beginning of the season that by the end of the season we would prove to people that it wasn’t a getting ready, rebuild kind of year. That we were just reloading. That we were going to be a team at the conference again. To lose six big seniors and lose the height that we lost last year, I’ve had girls that stepped in and have assumed that role and it has just been wonderful to watch it all unfold. We struggled a little bit at the beginning, but I think they’ve dug deep down in and realized how much they enjoyed playing like this tonight and now they want to keep playing. It’s exciting to see.”
Echoing Gaines’ thoughts, Harnett Central senior Ivanna Jones said the championship was the result of months of hard work.
“We’ve been working since summer workouts in June,” Jones said. “I just know day in and day out how much everyone wants it. So, that just makes you want to go for that extra ball. After that extra 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, whatever we’re doing outside, we know that our work is going to pay off in the long run and that makes us push harder and hustle more, even when we’re tired and our legs are giving out. We just know that we’ve worked so hard.”
“It’s always about how hard you want it,” added fellow Harnett Central senior Sinai Avalos-Beltran. “How badly you want it. Just fighting all the way through each set and each point as a team.”
The match also served as a tiebreaker for seeding priority for the NCHSAA 3-A state playoffs, as the two finished the regular season in a tie for first place, having dealt each other their only loss. The win was also a bit of revenge for the Trojans (17-7), as Terry Sanford had won 3-0 at Central the last time the two met on Oct. 6.
Senior Ivanna Jones and junior Lily Gervase shared match-high honors, with 11 kills to lead the scoring for Central.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” Jones said. “Just knowing that I had to step up for my girls and just seeing them really fires me up. Just playing for them and playing for the whole team behind me, it was easy to step up and just do what I had to do.”
Gaines said the service line set the tone for Central in the match. Senior Sinai Avalos-Beltran led all servers by holding serve for 20 points, including two aces, and junior Carlie Love had a match-high five aces.
“Every day in practice, we work on it,” Gaines said. “We’re working hard on serves and every drill we do, we incorporate serves. All 15 of these girls have the capability of being dangerous with a serve.”
“It’s a mental game,” Avalos-Beltran said. “You have to focus on just yourself and the ball and just getting it over the net.”
“Just take a deep breath right before you serve,” Love added. “You’ve just got to get it in.”
Central used three different setters during the match and Gaines was pleased with the effort she received from all three. Love had a double-double, with 19 assists and 10 digs, senior Carlee Harrell had six assists and Savannah Bain had two assists.
“Setting is kind of my thing,” said Gaines, who was a standout at setter playing for Triton in high school. “I feel more comfortable teaching that than anything. But the three of them work hard at practice. They’re with each other. They’re getting X amount of sets off of a machine. They’re working with each other. Reps on the wall. Whatever that they have to do, they’re going to do to get better.”
Harrell and Love praised Central’s hitters for being such reliable targets for their sets.
“I think not only are our hitters great skill-wise, I think they’re great people,” Harrell said. “So, it’s not only wanting to win for ourselves, wanting to win for everybody. Setting them, I just know I have confidence in them and myself and it really motivates us.”
“They (the hitters) really make us (the setters) look good,” Love added. “We always know that they’ve got our backs. No matter how good or bad the set is, we know they’re going to put it down.”
Gaines was also proud of the leadership on the back row from senior libero Mikaela Goss, who missed the entirety of last season with a leg injury. She matched Love’s 10 digs. Avalos-Beltran was also in double figures, with 12 digs.
“(Goss) has stepped in and played an incredible role for us this year,” Gaines said. “She hasn’t really played since her freshman year on JV. She got moved up her sophomore year and didn’t really play much and then last year she was out all season. This year she has really stepped up. She came in to summer workouts working hard. You’re not going to find another libero that works harder than her, in my opinion. She’s going to work corner-to-corner and, honestly, she’s probably going to work bleacher-to-bleacher, wall-to-wall. Whatever you ask her to do, she’s going to do it for you and she’s going to go after it hard. I know I can trust her back there with anything. She has stepped up tremendously for us.”
Avalos-Beltran had six kills, one assist and one block. KeErica Snead had three kills, one assist and a match-high three blocks. Harrell had two kills and held serve for four points. Jones had two blocks, six digs and one ace on six service points. Ashley Bliven had three digs and held serve for one point. Gervase had one dig and two aces on five service points. Goss had one ace on two service points.
Senior Maggie Barnes, who leads the Bulldogs (15-6) in kills on the season, had 22 kills against Triton in the second round Tuesday. Central’s defense held her to just six kills Wednesday.
“I told them, ‘Get out there early, set a block,’” Gaines said. “‘Shut her down early and we’re fine. She got a few kills here or there early on, but we adjusted our block, adjusted our defense and there wasn’t much for her to find a hole to score at all. And that take her out of the game and that just feeds our girls and their mentality and their excitement.”
Junior Ava Christiansen had five kills and junior Madison Harmon had 13 assists and one ace on 10 service points to also lead Terry Sanford.
Love opened the match with an ace to start Central on an early 5-1 run. Later in the set, with Central holding a 20-18 lead, an Avalos-Beltran kill, assisted by Bain, sparked a 5-2 run, capped by a Jones kill, assisted by Love, to end the set.
Terry Sanford grabbed an early 3-1 lead in the second set, but back-to-back kills from Gervase, both assisted by Love, sparked a run of 11 unanswered points, including three kills from Gervase and four kills and a block from Jones, to take the lead. A Maggy Watson kill, assisted by Kaylee Akers, sparked a 5-1 Bulldogs run to cut the lead to five. The Bulldogs would cut the lead to as low as four, at 19-15, but halted their own momentum with a serve error that started the Trojans on a 6-3 run, ended by another Terry Sanford service error, to end the set.
Back-to-back Love aces started the Trojans on a 10-1 run to open the third set. The Bulldogs rallied with a 9-2 run to cut the lead to two, but, once again, stopped their own momentum with a service error. Central capitalized with an 8-2 run, with another Love ace pushing the lead to 20-12. Terry Sanford was able to cut the lead to five, at 23-18, but a Jones kill, assisted by Harrell, followed by Snead winning a 50/50 ball at the net with a one-handed block gave the Trojans the win and the tournament championship.
Harnett Central will receive and automatic bid to the NCHSAA 3-A state playoffs and is projected to host a first-round match. Brackets will be released Thursday and play starts Saturday.
“Make sure to work hard,” Jones said. “We have to keep our energy up. We can’t get down. We know we made it this far for a reason and we have to show people that we didn’t just make it this far by luck and we actually have the skill to come out and play and that any time we had a loss or played bad, that it wasn’t us. And we actually come out to play Harnett Central volleyball. We need to do that every night.”
Savannah Bain sets for the Trojans in Wednesday’s match.
(Dunn Area Sports Photo/John Lucas)
Harnett Central’s Carlee Harrell (12) sets for Lily Gervase.
(Dunn Area Sports Photo/John Lucas)
Ivanna Jones gets a kill for Harnett Central in a 3-0 win.
(Dunn Area Sports Photo/John Lucas)
Sinai Avalos-Beltran serves for Central against Terry Sanford.
(Dunn Area Sports Photo/John Lucas)
KeErica Snead closes thee match with a block.
(Dunn Area Sports Photo/John Lucas)
The Trojans celebrate after winning the All American tournament.
(Dunn Area Sports Photo/John Lucas)
The Harnett Central volleyball team is pictured above. On the front row, from left, are Sinai Avalos-Beltran, Ivanna Jones, Carlee Harrell, Mikaela Goss and KeErica Snead. On the back row are assistant Elle Hepburn, coach Ashley Gaines, Novie Womack, Elle Gardner, Ashley Bliven, Lily Gervase, Mya Lewis, Victoria Langdon, Savannah Bain, Cayleigh Hughes, Carlie Love and assistants Olivia Scarborough and Chelsey Cabe. Not pictured is Kelsey Cofield. (Dunn Area Sports Photo/John Lucas)
