James Wood tops Millbrook in district volleyball championship

WINCHESTER — Playing without Class 4 Northwestern District Player of the Year Tori Johnson, the Millbrook volleyball team gave James Wood everything it can handle at the start of Tuesday’s district championship match.

Eventually, James Wood showed why it was definitively the district’s best team this year.

The top-seeded Colonels completed a perfect 17-0 district season by defeating No. 2 Milbrook 25-21, 25-11, 25-9 at James Wood’s Shirley Gymnasium. The championship was James Wood’s first in the postseason since capturing the Conference 21 West tournament in 2016.

The Pioneers led 17-16 at one point in the first set, but James Wood settled down to beat Millbrook for the third time in three meetings, winning the previous two matches 3-2 on Sept. 26 and 3-0 on Oct. 24 on James Wood’s senior night.

Colonels coach Jaime Terenzi told the team to treat every night like it was senior night after that match, and James Wood eventually found the energy it needed.

“She wants us to act like every match could be our last,” junior outside hitter Lainie Putt said. “We brought up our energy a lot throughout the match.”

Tuesday’s match had no impact on the pairings for the Region 4C semifinals, which will take place on Monday.

Millbrook (20-3), which did not have Johnson because of an injury suffered in practice, was already scheduled to travel to seven-time defending state champion Loudoun County, the Dulles District regular-season champion. James Wood (22-3) will host Heritage, the No. 2 seed out of the Dulles District, which clinched a region berth with a 3-0 Dulles District tournament semifinal win over Loudoun Valley on Tuesday. The winners of those two matches will earn Class 4 state tournament berths and advance to the Region 4C championship match on Nov. 13.

James Wood senior middle blocker Katie Costin said the Colonels’ three seniors knew that Johnson — whose unanimous POY selection was announced after the match — wasn’t going to play beforehand. They didn’t want to inform the rest of the team though because they didn’t want that to affect their mindset.

The Colonels struggled to find their rhythm anyway, though. James Wood had three attack errors, three service errors and had four hitting/court violations in the first set. Terenzi — the unanimous choice as district coach of the year — called a timeout after Millbrook went on a 4-0 run to take an 11-10 lead.

“There were a lot of unforced errors on our part, that we needed to fix,” Costin said. “We talked about cleaning up our side of the net, and focusing more on ourselves and less on them.”

James Wood wasn’t able to assert itself until the end of the first set. A kill by Grace Frigaard (nine kills) put the Colonels up 18-17, a kill by Frigaard answered a block from Millbrook’s Ashley Roberts (four blocks) to make it 21-18, and a kill by Kristyna Van Sickler (seven kills, 13 digs) resulted in a set point at 24-20. The Colonels closed it out two points later on a service error.

“I don’t think we necessarily came out with as much fire as we did senior night,” said Terenzi, referencing James Wood’s 3-0 win over Millbrook. “It just took us a little while to get going.”

Had the Pioneers been a little sharper themselves, they might have been to able to grab the first set. Millbrook committed eight attack errors in the first set playing without the area’s kill leader in Johnson, including two in a row to put James Wood up 23-18. The service error on set point was one of four Millbrook had in the set.

Sister Skylar Johnson, a junior, said she had never played a match at Millbrook without Tori, so the adjustment wasn’t easy.

“I think if we had just done the fundamentals a little bit better, we could have pulled through, but it all comes down to the fundamentals,” Skylar said.

Millbrook coach Carla Milton liked that her team — which had four blocks in the first set — was competitive throughout the initial set. While attack errors happen, Milton said some of the other mistakes were just too much to overcome.

“We were in the net, we had a ball drop on our side that shouldn’t have, we had the service errors,” Milton said. “You’ve just got to minimize those types of errors.”

Putt (nine kills) said James Wood was fired up after winning the first set, and that propelled the Colonels to a dominant second set in which Putt had four kills, Costin had two kills and two blocks and Hanna Plasters (21 assists, six digs) had two aces.

Millbrook regrouped in the third set and led 13-12. But with the Colonels ahead 19-17, Frigaard had three of her six kills in the set to close it out, including one on match point.

“In the third set, we had to focus more on our hitting and making sure we were putting the ball down, because they finding a lot of our spots,” Costin said. “Once we started to move the ball around, it was a lot easier for us to score.”

“In the second set, I think we were were able to minimize our mistakes and force Millbrook to make a few of their own,” Terenzi said. “I didn’t want the third set to be as close as it was in the beginning, but we were able to pull it out.”

James Wood was also led by Olivia Biggs (three blocks). Biggs was one of five James Wood players to make the all-district first team.

Millbrook also was led by Skylar Johnson (10 kills, six digs), Jordan Weir (four kills, four blocks), Autumn Stroop (eight assists, five digs) and Madison Koeller (seven assists).

Milton said Tori Johnson is unlikely to play against Loudoun County, so the Pioneers will have to find a way to regroup.

“I thought the first set we played very well, and I thought the same in the third one,” Milton said. “There were points in both sets that could have gone either way, but we just made a mistake here or there.

“We need to move our feet and communicate better. If we can do that, we’ve got a chance.”