Southern Ohio Sports Authority is presented by OhioHealth.
WAVERLY — For just a brief moment in Saturday’s Division V district championship game between Wheelersburg and Fairland, it looked as if the Pirates may have a chink in their armor.
But at the most critical point of the match, ‘Burg senior Gracie Perkins made sure to put all of those doubts to rest.
After winning the day’s first two sets by finals of 25-9 and 25-10, Wheelersburg was on the ropes in the third, trailing 24-23.
But after a kill from Laynee Walker kept the Pirates alive at 24-24, Perkins took matters into her own hands with the score knotted at 26-26.
CREDIT: Derrick Webb/SOSA
The District Player of the Year powered down back-to-back kills to polish off a 28-26 win and send her team back into the Sweet 16.
“Gracie is such a special senior,” Wheelersburg coach Kelsey Glockner said. “She does so much for the team and she does so much in a statistical sense. But when you actually talk to her and get to know her, none of that matters to her. She just loves her team. She just wants to win. The connection that she has with each and every one of her teammates is special. They want to win for her.”
In the first two sets, Fairland was no match for Wheelersburg’s dynamic offensive attack.
If it wasn’t Perkins finding holes in the Dragons’ defense — and it certainly was early on — it was Alyssa Mullins.
“Alyssa wants the ball. That’s the best thing about her,” Glockner said. “But the ability that she had when she got the ball today was probably the most consistent I’ve seen her. I don’t even know that she had a hitting error. She was on. That’s the big thing we tell her. She has to stay ready.”
Walker, Grace Woodward and Brooklyn Miller also lended helping hands while setter Ella Chamberlin placed the ball on the money each and every chance she was given to do so.
Before the Dragons could blink in the first set, behind that group, ‘Burg had a 9-0 lead.
That momentum never reached an end.
The Pirates’ advantage swelled to 14-2 after an ace from Chamberlin and to 21-8 later in the game, in part, thanks to a kill from Chamberlin and an ace from Mullins.
That was more than enough juice to power a dominant 25-9 victory to start the day.
Not much changed in the second, either.
Mullins and Walker gave Wheelersburg a 5-3 lead early before Perkins tallied back-to-back kills for a 12-8 edge.
Mullins and Woodward then went to work, powering a 9-2 run, pushing the lead to 21-10, before ‘Burg closed out another dominant win at 25-10.
“We’ve put a big emphasis on not just settling where we are,” Glockner said. “If we keep progressing through the tournament, we want to keep adding things. In the first two sets, the discipline that we’ve talked about, being calm, everyone doing their jobs, that’s what showed up. It was like a well-oiled machine. But in that third set, our girls weren’t going and taking the game over. They were letting it come to them. That was the big shift I saw. We lost some aggressiveness and we got quieter for some reason. But kudos to Fairland. They didn’t give up.”
Fairland woke up in the third set.
The Dragons’ attack, led by Chloe Mayo, Addison Godby and Carlee Hall, kept the team in the ballgame and even kept a lead intact midway through.
Wheelersburg went back in front at 16-15 and eventually seized a 23-18 advantage, but Fairland, with its season on life support, didn’t go away easily.
Godby and Hall spearheaded a 6-0 charge and allowed the Dragons to force match point at 24-23.
But it simply wasn’t meant to be.
Walker got her kill to tie and handed things over to Perkins, who put the exclamation point on the win.
“This win today definitely means a lot to us,” Perkins said. “At the beginning of the season, we sat down and made a list of goals. After losing in the district final last year, winning the district was one of them. So it’s another checkmark off the list. We’ve put in the hard work in practice since June. So this just feels so good to win it.”
While the Dragons’ season comes to an end, Wheelersburg advances to a Division V regional semifinal.
The Pirates will meet with Belmont Union Local — a four-set winner over Coshocton — at 6 p.m. on Thursday at Logan High School.
“As frustrated as I was in that third set after what happened in the first two, now that it’s over, I’m kind of happy about some of the bad things I saw,” Glockner said. “I learned a few things that we’re still trying to work on, grow in and polish up. There are things that I definitely jotted down so that we can keep progressing. We learned more and that’s the goal.”
POWERED BY GLO FIBER
