Volleyball Coach of the Year: James Wood's Adrienne Patrick

James Wood third-year head coach Adrienne Patrick is The Winchester Star Volleyball Coach of the Year after leading the Colonels to a historic season.

The Colonels graduated three seniors from last year's 17-7 regional semifinalists and returned eight players. They also added three newcomers, including a pair of freshmen who eventually earned Class 4 First Team All-State honors in Brenna Corbin (an outside hitter/defensive specialist) and Kennedy Spaid (an outside hitter).

For the first time ever, James Wood had a perfect regular season (20-0), including a 12-0 mark in the Class 4 Northwestern District for its first regular-season district title since 2019. The Colonels dropped only five sets in those 20 matches.

The Colonels' regular season started with a 3-0 victory over 10-time defending Class 4 state champion Loudoun County and included a 3-2 win over eventual Maryland Class 3A state champion North Hagerstown (Maryland has four classes) and a 3-0 win over Williamsport, which had a streak of 16 straight Maryland Class 1A state titles snapped this season.

The Colonels lost the district tournament championship 3-0 to Millbrook following two 3-1 wins over the Pioneers in the regular season. But in the Region 4C tournament, James Wood rebounded with 3-1 win against Dulles District regular-season champion Rock Ridge in the semifinals and a 3-2 victory against Dulles District tournament champion Dominion in the final. James Wood's win over the Titans gave the program its first-ever region title.

In James Wood's first state tournament since 2019, the Colonels defeated Region 4D runner-up E.C. Glass 3-1 in the quarterfinals. In a rematch with Dominion in the semifinals, James Wood won 3-1.

The victory over the Titans put James Wood in a state final at Virginia Commonwealth University's Siegel Center in Richmond for the first time since 2014. In the match against Grafton — which had lost the five previous state finals to Loudoun County — James Wood won 3-0 by the scores of 25-19, 25-19, 25-16.

The win not only gave the Colonels their first state title in program history, but also the first girls' team state title of any kind for the 72-year-old school. James Wood's only previous team state championships came in football (1970) and boys' cross country (2002). The Colonels finished with a 26-1 record, matching the win total of the 2014 team that went 26-5.

Q. How did this season go based on your preseason expectations?

Patrick: I said [in the preseason] that we would be aggressive in the district. I knew that we had a huge group of girls coming back who were talented and could effectively gel well. Then we had three new people who weren't really new. We moved one person up from JV (junior Ashlynn Spence) and Brenna and Kennedy were my managers the previous two seasons. Everyone just knew everybody really well and we all kind of knew everyone's abilities.

I didn't anticipate we would win a state championship. I don't know if that's something anybody really says at the beginning of the season unless they have psychic abilities. But I did feel we had an amazing group of talented athletes, and that we were definitely capable of doing great things, which proved to be true.

Q. What qualities stood out about your team this season?

Patrick: Their friendship that they had from Day 1. Their ability to understand each other, their ability to communicate, which translates on and off the court. The bond that they had wasn't anything I created. Of course I foster that, we do a lot of things to foster team bonding, but the fact they already came together so close-knit is amazing. Because then you can just start off [the season] with your skills and actual team play. You're just focusing on volleyball. We didn't have to call in anybody to talk about, 'Why are you two having a disagreement?' We didn't have to go through anything like that.

And there were several girls that didn't necessarily play the position that they wanted or that they played in previous seasons or with their travel programs. Some people were kind of moving all over the place. So their flexibility also stood out.

Q. What things and matches were significantly important in the team’s development?

Patrick: We had a strength and conditioning program that we had never done before at the Valley Health Parisi Speed School. We got a complete paid for scholarship to be a part of that after I wrote a letter. You had to apply for it. People got turned down. That program helped us tremendously. There were significant gains that we had in our ability to jump higher and increase our verticals.

The Loudoun County match, being able to win against a renowned powerhouse team that we had previously lost to gave us a categorical propulsion upwards in regards to internal thoughts of your abilities. They had this feeling with themselves of, 'We can be successful. I can do this. We can do this.'

Then being able to beat (defending district champion) Millbrook at Millbrook. (Prior to that win on Sept. 27, the Colonels had lost seven straight matches to the Pioneers, last winning in 2019.) Being at an opponent's school can potentially affect your play. We have always been told with our home matches that our Loud Crowd can be intimidating to other people. We knew it would be a challenge at Millbrook because they're going to have a huge crowd, you're going into that gym and that environment, and it had been a while since we had beaten them. So to win there was big.

Also, beating North Hagerstown. (James Wood won the last two sets of the five-setter, including 17-15 in the final set.) [North Hagerstown] has an extremely aggressive team. When you know you're going up against a team that has a height advantage, people that are already committed to play at a high collegiate level, when you go into a match like that, you can think of it as one of two things. You can [worry about it], or you can have the mindset of, 'We have to control the game the best that we know how, and that's controlling our side of the court.' So it was also big to win that and also against Williamsport, because they're great programs and we had always struggled playing them.

Q. What were the most memorable moments?

Patrick: Winning the regional championship against Dominion, that was such a big deal. The fact that was the first one we had ever won, that's huge. There's multiple times in the program's history we've been in the regional championship but have not won. And even playing Dominion the second time [in the state semis], that was even more memorable just because of the fierceness I saw in my athletes. They wanted that match, and it showed.

And playing in the state championship match, being ushered through the back entrance into such a large facility, I'll never forget the entire experience. I thought we played a great match. We had some errors that I feel our team is capable of not making. But we came in feeling very much so that we deserved to be there, and we were going to play our game to win. There was never a thought we weren't going to win a state championship, because we believed we had the talent and ability to do so.

— Compiled by Robert Niedzwiecki