Colonels fall to Falcons

November 9, 2010

By Mark Sawyer
Special to The Winchester Star       

WINCHESTER- Things could not have started out any better for the James Wood High School volleyball team Monday night.

On the sixth point of the match, senior Emily Shannon became the first player in school history to reach 1,000 career kills. Her shot down the line on the near side gave the Colonels a 4-2 lead and set off a flurry of emotion and intensity that carried Wood to a 25-23 win in the first set.

Unfortunately, there was very little for the Colonels to celebrate after that.

Briar Woods rallied to win the final three sets of the match and knock out Wood 3-1 (23-25, 25-14, 25-12, 25-21) in the first round of the Region II tournament at Donald H. Shirley gymnasium.

It was the Colonels' first regional appearance in three years.

"It feels good to break a record. It would've have been amazing [to win], but you have to give them credit. They were really scrappy," Shannon said. "We did really well this season. We had our ups and downs, but we had a great season. I couldn't have asked for a better senior season." Shannon - who came in just two kills shy of 1,000 - had nine in the first set. She broke a 4-4 tie with two straight kills and a block to make it 7-4.

Briar Woods (16-8) scored four of the next five points to pull into an 8-8 tie. The first set then went back and forth until the Colonels broke a 13-13 deadlock with a 6-1 run. Two more kills from Shannon, a kill by fellow senior Hannah Tierney, and an ace by classmate Megan Crabtree highlighted the run.

Leading 19-14 it appeared Wood (16-7) was well on its way to an easy first set win, however the Falcons stormed back with a 9-4 run to tie it again 23-23.

James Wood coach Jill Lester called a timeout, and fittingly it was Tierney and Shannon who once again answered the call. Tierney made it set point with a block, and Shannon gave the Colonels a 1-0 lead in the match when she rocketed a kill through the Falcons' defense.

"For some reason we have a hard time getting started," Briar Woods coach Diane Breinig said. "[Our girls] decided they weren't going to lose, so they won the next three. We tried to mix it up as much as possible. Everybody was doing a fantastic job, and I have to give credit to all of them. It took all of them."

Briar Woods made some adjustments, going more to a tipping and pushing offense and playing much better defense, as the Falcons got pieces of several attacks from Shannon and Tierney.

The adjustments were successful and staked the Falcons to large early leads in both of the next two sets. In the second, Briar Woods jumped out to a 12-4 lead.

In the third, the Falcons went up 8-1.

"I think the overall difference was our intensity level," Lester said. "We started making mistakes early in the second set that put us in a little hole, and holes are hard to get out of in volleyball. We made more errors tonight than we would have liked to have made."

It appeared the third set would continue the trend, as Briar Woods raced out to an 11-6 lead.

But with their season on the line, the Colonels responded to another timeout called by Lester. Wood stormed out of the break and won seven of the next eight points to grab a 13-12 lead.

The set would be tied three more times, the last coming when Shannon knotted it up at 18-18 with an ace, but a Colonels serving error gave the serve back to the Falcons and sparked a 5-1 run that put the Colonels on the brink of elmination at 23-19.

A flurry of service errors on both sides of the net ended the match and James Wood's season.

"It was a little bit disappointing, but I was glad that we were the ones there in that match," Tierney said. "Making it to regionals was such a big goal for this team this year, and accomplishing it is all I could ask for. I'm just sad to have to leave these girls. It was a great season and a great year."

Shannon led the way for the Colonels with a match-high 15 kills. She also had three blocks and an ace. Tierney chipped in with eight kills, two aces and three blocks, while Crabtree had two kills and five aces.

"I'm so proud of these girls," Lester said. "We've got nothing to be disappointed about. We made it to regionals, which was a goal for us. Emily got her school record for kills. The tears were shed in the locker room, but they weren't shed over that loss. They were shed over the season coming to an end. Our girls know volleyball is not about wins and losses, it's about the bond we have as a team."

Five different Falcons had at least one kill in the match, led by Natalie Deffer's 11. Lindsay Simmons and Keandra McCardell added six each.

Briar Woods advances to tonight's quarterfinals and faces Dulles District rival Loudoun County for the fourth time this season. The district champion Raiders won each of the previous meetings.