Colonels Sweep Way Into State Final

Posted: November 19, 2014
By KEVIN TRUDGEON
The Winchester Star

YORKTOWN — After spending four hours on a bus to make the 210-mile trek down to Grafton High School Tuesday evening, you’d think the last thing the James Wood volleyball team would have wanted to do was get back on the road.

But the speed with which the Colonels dispatched the host Clippers in their Group 4A state semifinal match made it apparent that they had no intention of extending their stay any longer than they needed to.

Bucking the trend of starting slow after long road trips, James Wood never trailed in the first set and rode that momentum to a convincing 3-0 (25-15, 25-16, 25-15) sweep of Grafton that took less than an hour to complete and clinched the first trip to the state championship in program history.

“We just weren’t nervous at all,” said senior opposite Lindsey Painter. “I talked to a bunch of the girls and we just felt really good about tonight. We never questioned the season ending tonight, we just knew we had what it takes and knew we could do it if we put our mind to it and we did.”

The Colonels (26-4) had dropped the first set after long bus rides to play Fluvanna and Jefferson Forest in the Conference 21 and 4A North Region semifinals, respectively, but Tuesday night was a different story.

Grafton (20-8) handed James Wood its first four points on errors, and the Colonels took off from there.

Starting with a kill down the line from senior setter/outside hitter Ashley Hillyard (13 assists and eight kills), James Wood ripped off seven straight points on the back of four Clipper hitting errors, a solo block from Hillyard, and a back-row attack from senior outside hitter Katie Houser that rolled over the top of two blockers and landed between three other Grafton players.

The 7-0 run turned a tie game into a 13-6 advantage for James Wood, and kills from sophomore Leilani Burch, Painter and Houser, as well as the first of three aces from senior defensive specialist Savannah Yost, put the set out of reach early.

“I just thought everything clicked for us tonight right from the start,” said James Wood coach Jill Couturiaux. “We were so good on defense, so good at the net, and our offensive players were able to put the ball away, which is something we struggled to do against Loudoun County [in the 4A North Region finals Saturday].

“I gave the girls a quote from John Wooden tonight, ‘Bring your best when your best is needed.’ And tonight I told them that I needed their best and they gave it to me.”

The ease and speed with which the Colonels took the first set seemed to take some of the air out of Grafton’s home crowd, and a decisive 13-1 run midway through the second set left the small contingent of James Wood fans as the only ones cheering in the gym.

Trailing 7-5 after a kill from Grafton junior Sophia Beaudoin, Hillyard smashed a kill off the block to give the Colonels back the serve and the front line took over from there.

Painter (five kills and six blocks) denied a dump attempt by Clippers setter Kaitlyn Young, followed that up with a block of Samantha Heard’s tip, and then middle blockers Taylor Heishman and Emma Montgomery (six blocks) turned away a spike from Beaudoin.

Hillyard followed the three consecutive blocks with an ace, Burch fired a kill off a free ball, Houser (team-high 19 kills) added four kills of her own, and Painter and Montgomery combined for two more blocks to stretch the lead to 18-8 and force Grafton coach Karissa Cumberbatch to call for a timeout to try and regroup her team.

“We’re definitely undersized against any team we face and we expected [James Wood] to be big. We worked on preparing our hitters, but it just wasn’t our night,” Cumberbatch said.

“We’re usually undersized against any team we face, and normally we’re faster than them and if we’re on our game and we’re all playing together, it’s not a problem. But we just never were in sync with one another it seems like, we could never get on a roll.”

The second set was fittingly clinched by Painter with a solo block of another Young tip attempt — the sixth block of the set for the Colonels — and after a back-and-forth start to the third set, James Wood pulled away for good.

An ace from senior defensive specialist Lexi Copley capped a 5-1 run that gave the Colonels a 15-10 edge and, after two straight Grafton kills, the Colonels put the finishing touches on the sweep with seven straight points that included three kills from Houser and one from Hillyard.

Senior libero Ally Iden had another solid performance on the back line with a team-high 15 digs and Burch finished with three kills in the win.

“Last year we made it to the semifinals and that was a huge deal for us,” Burch said. “So this year, we wanted to make it one step further and that’s been a huge driving factor for us. We’ve made these long trips before, so there was nothing new and nothing to be nervous about. We wanted this so bad, we wanted to get to the finals.”

The Colonels will face a familiar foe in the Group 4A state finals, which is schedule for 5 p.m. Saturday at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Siegel Center. Longtime nemesis Loudoun County, which has beaten James Wood 3-0, 3-1, and 3-2 in their three meetings this season, swept Jamestown in the other state semifinal Tuesday.

The prospect of facing the Raiders for a fourth time this season is one the Colonels say they wanted, and Couturiaux said she couldn’t be happier for her team to get the chance to play on the biggest stage.

“There’s no other group I would rather go to Richmond with than this group of 14 girls,” Couturiaux said. “The seven seniors who have been with me since they were 13 years old, the rest of the girls who have been with us since day one, this is my dream team.

“We had our fewest errors tonight, we played as a team, we had lots of contributions from everybody both offensively and defensively, so I like what I saw. I feel like we’re ready to play for a state championship.”

— Contact Kevin Trudgeon at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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