Colonels floored by win

By David Selig
The Winchester Star

WINCHESTER — After surviving a five-set thriller at Millbrook Thursday night, James Wood High School’s volleyball players fell to the floor in unison on their side of the court.

They weren’t gloating in the glory of the 3-2 (25-19, 30-28, 13-25, 15-25, 16-14) victory or rubbing it in to their Frederick County rivals.

They were actually feeding off a motivational speech former James Wood football coach Walter Barr shared with them three weeks ago.

Barr told the Colonels the story of his team’s win at Handley in 2007, which was inspired by a famous Vince Lombardi quote.

“I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle — victorious,” the legendary Green Bay Packers coach once said.

To honor those words — which Barr shared before the Wood volleyball team lost in five sets to Millbrook Oct. 1 — the players lied on the floor victorious after Hannah Tierney’s kill put away a tense rematch Thursday night.

“Overall I think we finally deserve to win,” Colonels senior setter Carly Mullin said. “We’re just as good as them ... and it just feels so good to beat them.”

Despite all the emotion stuffed into another meeting between the two teams on Millbrook’s senior night, this one actually had little at stake.

Their next match will be the one that really counts.

With Wood currently in second place and Millbrook third, the teams are slated to meet in the Northwestern District semifinals Nov. 3 at Skyline, a match that would end one’s season and likely send the other to regionals.

For that reason, the Colonels (12-6, 5-2) needed to prove they could beat the Pioneers (13-5, 4-3). To do that, James Wood came out with a different rotation, swapping Emily Shannon to middle hitter and Tierney to the outside.

The switch helped Wood block 21 shots in the match — far more than usual. Shannon led with eight of them (to go along with 18 kills), while Tierney and Peyton Clark each added four blocks.

“We had a number of stuff blocks in Games 1 and 2 that I think kind of set the tone for the way we wanted to play our defense tonight,” Colonels coach Jill Lester said. “We probably had more blocks tonight than we had all season.”

As well as the new strategy worked in the first two sets, it may have tired out Tierney, who is accustomed to getting a breather after three rotations as a middle but played all around as an outside hitter.

Wood only had five kills in an uncompetitive third set, which got Millbrook cranking in the right direction.

Devon Courneya — who ripped a match-high 28 kills — couldn’t be stopped in that third set, and Gennie McGuirk also came alive, totaling seven kills, three aces and two blocks in the Pioneers’ victories in sets three and four.

After McGuirk’s diving dig turned into a well-placed point to end the fourth set, James Wood decided to return to its normal rotation for the fifth.

“When we got beat two games in the same rotation I thought, ‘Let’s go back to what we know and see what happens,’” Lester said.

Millbrook took a 5-1 lead to begin the fifth set, but the Colonels fought back.

After pulling even, Eleanor Kent served two of her five aces back-to-back to push Wood ahead 8-6.

Mullin (32 assists) made it 9-6 with a kill, but the Pioneers eventually evened the score again at 10.

It was tied 14-14 when McGuirk committed a service error, and then Tierney (nine kills) closed out the match.

“We had to take a deep breath and start playing as a team,” Tierney said of that early fifth-set hole. “We had to get it together, and we did.”

With each team having one regular-season match remaining, James Wood could presumably tie with Sherando in the standings. But Sherando Coordinator of Student Activities Jason Barbe said in an e-mail Thursday that the Warriors would have the tiebreaker to win the district and the automatic Region II berth that goes with it.

That leaves one berth remaining, and if Sherando advances to the championship match, the winner of the James Wood-Millbrook semifinal would get it.

Thursday’s result doesn’t change those stakes one bit, but it certainly elevated the Colonels’ confidence.

Millbrook coach Kim Riordan hopes it also teaches her team a lesson.

“I’m hoping that the girls can realize that we can’t let teams come in and play with us those first two games,” Riordan said. “I think we’re kind of used to letting a team win one and figuring, ‘We’ll come back later.’

“I think after tonight they’re finally realizing that they can’t do that.”

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