For the senior-dominated South Carroll Cavaliers, Tuesday night’s state volleyball semifinals were supposed to be a coming-out party. The Clear Spring Blazers from Washington County had other ideas.
The Blazers never trailed in the match before recording a 25-22, 25-11, 25-20 victory in the Class 1A semifinals. Clear Spring (15-5) will play for its third state championship in four years on Saturday at noon at Harford Community College against Harford County’s Patterson Mill.
“We knew going into the game that they were going to be a tough team,” South Carroll senior Elaina Murphy said. “I think for the most part our biggest challenge was our serve receive. They had some pretty tough serves and we couldn’t handle it.”
The best set for the Cavs (14-2) was the first. After trailing most of the set, South Carroll rallied from a 21-15 deficit using the service of Morgan Taylor. Taylor served five straight service winners, and Murphy and Jenna Todd contributed kills to go on a 5-0 run to tie the set at 21 apiece. That, in turn, forced a time out by Blazers coach Jessica Custer.
The Blazers looked like a different team after the time out. Clear went on a 4-1 run to close out the set and record a 25-22 win.
South Carroll struggled mightily in the second set. After cutting the deficit to just one at 7-6, Clear Spring’s Ella Wagner went on a serving run of her own, recording five service winners including two aces to extend the lead to 12-6. Even after Cavs coach Kristine Keck called a time out, South Carroll continued its slide. A combination of Cavs mistakes and excellent ball placement lead to South Carroll only recording five more points and dropping the second set 25-11.
“I think our energy fell off in the second set,” senior Gabriella Deyo said. “That ultimately affected our play for the rest of that set. It was a mental thing, and I think that was our biggest challenge today.”
The third set was much closer. After a service error by Clear Spring, the Cavs trailed 20-17 late in the set. Clear Spring then got an ace by Kaisy Custer and kills by Juliet Hodge and two by Olivia Smith to end the set 25-20 and take the match.
The loss ends the career of South Carroll’s Murphy. The senior will leave as one of the greatest players in South Carroll history. She has already been named county Player of the Year by the coaches for three consecutive seasons and should win it again this year.
“I just blessed to have played these four years and stayed healthy and played with these awesome girls,” Murphy said. “It’s been a fun ride.”
Keck was just proud of the effort her team, which is losing seven seniors, showed throughout the year.
“We had an incredible season,” Keck said. “I think these girls preformed to the best of their abilities. The reason they were so successful is that they worked as a team and they trusted each other. That brought us further than maybe their athletic ability indicated it would.”
No. 13 Reservoir falls in Class 3A semifinals
In the Class 3A volleyball semifinals, Washington County’s North Hagerstown (23-0) used 28 kills from Marquette-bound senior Caydence Doolan to defeat No. 13 Reservoir (19-3), 25-19, 15-18, 25-13 at Thomas Johnson High School in Frederick
The Hubs will play Howard/Arundel on Saturday at 2 p.m. at Harford Community College. North Hagerstown will be playing for their fourth consecutive state title.
Doolan was almost a one-person show and kept the Gators off their game all night with her thundering kills.
Reservoir, which has overachieved this season after getting hit hard by graduation, just had no answer for Doolan. North Hagerstown also did a good job of taking advantage of serving errors and unforced errors by Reservoir. The Gators made several runs, and even cut the lead to 20-17 in the first set, but the Hubs were just too much.
In an interesting side note, the last Maryland school to beat North Hagerstown was Reservoir. The Gators did that in the state semifinals in 2021.
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