Colonels Take Raiders To Limit In Loss

Posted: November 17, 2014
By KEVIN TRUDGEON
The Winchester Star

LEESBURG — Saturday’s 4A North Region finals match proved two things — the James Wood volleyball team is a legitimate title contender, but Loudoun County is still the champ until someone knocks it out.

In a wild five-set thriller that saw the Colonels move yet another step closer to defeating their nemesis of the past three seasons, the Raiders rallied from down 2-1 to beat James Wood 3-2 (22-25, 25-14, 24-26, 25-6, 15-7) and clinch yet another region title.

With the win, Loudoun County will host 4A South Region runner-up Jamestown in the state semifinals, while James Wood will travel to play 4A South champion Grafton in other state semifinal at 7 p.m. on Tuesday.

“[Falling behind 2-1] was upsetting because we haven’t had that happen to us very much,” said Loudoun County senior Hannah Vandegrift, whose team had only gone to five sets one other time this season in a 3-2 loss to Stone Bridge. “But we know we can’t win every game and that we needed to keep pushing and not give up, because we know that [James Wood] wasn’t going to give up.”

The Colonels (25-4) proved that in the third set when they built a 19-8 lead, watched the Raiders (27-2) scored nine straight to go up 23-22, survived a set point thanks to a big kill from sophomore Leilani Burch, and then closed out the set on the back of an ace from senior Ashley Hillyard and a kill off the block from senior Lindsey Painter to silence a stunned Loudoun County crowd.

“That third set was so great, we had so much intensity throughout the entire thing,” said sophomore middle blocker Taylor Heishman, who was huge at the net all night with a team-high nine blocks. “We were so proud of ourselves because we never gave up, we had fun that set.”

It was the first time in three tries that James Wood had taken two sets off the Raiders — the Colonels were swept in the regular season and lost 3-1 in the Conference 21 Tournament finals — and it looked for a moment as if it might ride that momentum to an upset win.

But just as it did after losing the first set, Loudoun County roared back in the fourth set, jumping out to a quick 13-2 lead and never looking back to force a fifth set.

James Wood tried to regain the momentum in the fifth set, trading points early on behind a pair of kills from senior outside hitter Katie Houser (team-high 25 kills), but the Raiders, who repeatedly fed junior Rachel Voketaitis in the middle over the final two sets, used a five-point run to take a 7-2 lead and the Colonels never got closer than four the rest of the way.

“That seems to happen down here, no other team does that to us where they get a big lead and just pull away like that,” said James Wood coach Jill Couturiaux. “We just get in this hole we can’t get out of. The key to beating Loudoun is just coming out strong and staying up. It seems like when we get into a hole we have a hard time digging out of it against them, and that hasn’t been the case all season.”

When James Wood started fast it more than held its own against a Loudoun County team that’s won six of the last seven state titles, including each of the last two.

The first set saw Houser start quick with a pair of kills from the left side, and with the Raider defense keying on her the rest of the Colonels took advantage.

Burch and Painter had back-to-back kills to stretch the lead to 9-5, senior libero Ally Iden had an ace, Hillyard (19 assists) provided three big kills down the stretch, and Heishman paired up with junior middle Emma Montgomery to block Loudoun County junior Taylor Borup to clinch the set.

The second set saw James Wood take a quick 3-1 lead behind another block from Heishman, this time with Painter, but the Raiders quickly ripped off five straight points to take the lead and used a 10-1 run midway through the set to pull away and tie it up 1-1.

The opening of the third set was powered by the Hillyard sisters for the Colonels, with sophomore setter Megan firing consecutive aces and Ashley scoring three straight points on two kills and a solo block. By the time Heishman blocked Voketaitis on a quick set to the middle, James Wood led 21-12 and seemed well on its way to an easy win.

But Loudoun County had other ideas, scoring nine straight and 12 of the next 14 points to go up 24-23 on a Ciara Kain kill. With the Raiders fans in a frenzy, Burch kept James Wood’s hopes alive with a deep kill and Ashley Hillyard gave the Colonels set point with an ace, setting up Painter’s kill off the block to clinch the set.

“I feel like I don’t even remember what happened in the third set, there was so much excitement and emotion,” Couturiaux said. “We put pressure on their attackers, we had some blocks come up big and we scored just at the right time. That kill that Leilani had to tie it up was huge, because one mistake right there and it’s over. That’s all we were looking for, just a little momentum, something to get excited about.”

The Colonels couldn’t carry the momentum over to the fourth or fifth set, but Couturiaux said she saw a lot of positives from Saturday’s match.

She would have liked to avoid the four-hour bus ride to Grafton on Tuesday, but after reaching the state quarterfinals and semifinals the last two years, respectively, Couturiaux’s confident James Wood can take that next step this year — and possibly face Loudoun County for a fourth time in the state finals.

“We’re OK with this loss, losses expose a lot and we’ll clean some things up before we head to Grafton on Tuesday,” Couturiaux said. “We talked about it earlier, about how we got swept [by Loudoun County], took one [set], took two [sets]. Let’s beat them when it really counts, let’s beat them when everything’s on the line for a state title. We want that chance.”

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