Brock Netter, Staff Writer
Southern Ohio Sports Authority is presented by OhioHealth.
CHILLICOTHE — What started as a match filled with hope ended with tears alongside a season’s end on Saturday.
CREDIT: Cory Hall/SOSA
Gallia Academy started the game hot, but its momentum wasn’t sustainable and it succumbed to the tradition of Sheridan, falling in four sets — 17-25, 25-21, 25-9 and 25-12 — in a Division II district final at Southeastern High School.
While Saturday marked the Blue Angels’ first trip to a district final since 2016, it was marked the fifth straight district championship for the Generals.
“As you go further and further in the tournament, you’re going to play better teams. But when you don’t execute, it comes down to how you respond,” Gallia Academy coach Sally Barnette said. “And I couldn’t have been more proud of the fight we showed when things weren’t going our way. We’re playing Sheridan, they’re a great team and this is a stage they’re familiar with. But we didn’t back down and battled until the end.”
Though the Generals took the win in the end, Gallia Academy (21-4) came out swinging and showed no signs of fear.
After five ties and a couple lead changes, the Blue Angels took a 10-9 lead following a kill from Emma Hammons. Point by point, they slowly began to create a little separation behind Hammons, Callie Wilson and the defensive scrappiness of Jenna Harrison to later control an 18-14 lead.
Sheridan attempted to make a rally, but made too many hitting errors that aided the Blue Angels to take the first set win.
“That first set couldn’t have been any more perfect. We watched so much film and played a lot to what we saw on it,” Barnette said. “We knew where the holes would be, we worked on hitting around the blocks, serve receive and playing fast since we knew that’s where they might struggle and get frustrated. It worked right down to the last detail.”
Understanding that Sheridan was going to fight back, the Blue Angels geared up for a fight knowing how important the second was going to be.
PHOTOS: Images from Gallia Academy’s district final loss to Sheridan
After a series of ties at the beginning of the sequence, Sheridan’s Alexis Bardley came up with back-to-back kills to put the Generals ahead 11-8. The attack continued as Jamisyn Stinson and Halle Warner helped push the lead to 18-12.
However, Gallia fought back with Harrison at the service line and managed to trim the lead to 20-18. In the end though, Sheridan powered through with a pair of kills from Stinson to tie the match at 1-1.
“Sheridan mixed a few things up and we hung in for as long as we could,” Barnette said. “The biggest thing was they hit different spots on the floor that we couldn’t get to in time and we got off our game plan a little bit. So that didn’t help either.”
Sheridan was then able to flex its muscles to show why it was a repeat district champion.
Behind Stinson and Warner at the net, alongside Payton Powell at the service line, the Generals jumped out to a quick 14-4 lead in the third and never looked back. Displaying their dominance and firepower, they kept Gallia under a 10-point total while cruising to a decisive third set win.
And, sensing the title was theirs, they kept their foot on the gas as Stinson and Bardley got them out to a 9-6 lead in the fourth. Then came the explosion as Sheridan generated a 9-1 run, which was too much in the end for the Blue Angels to survive.
CREDIT: Cory Hall/SOSA
“It gets gritty and you never want to panic in those moments of adversity and trust each other, sort of like life in a nutshell,” Barnette said. “The waves are coming and coming, but you have to keep the big picture. They could have just laid down in the fourth set, but these girls fought and just kept going. We don’t have the height Sheridan does, but we have the heart and these girls put the work in to make it to this point.”
Gallia Academy says goodbye to six seniors — Jenna Harrison, Regan Wilcoxon, Madison Ratliff, Callie Wilson, Courtney Corvin and Reagen Skidmore.
“These girls played with a lot of pressure to continue the OVC winning streak that reached 97 games, and that can weigh on you as the number of games gets bigger,” Barnette said. “But these girls rose up to the challenge, brought back another conference title, won a sectional and made it to a district final. We haven’t been here in a while, and this was our goal. We would have liked to win, but this was a great experience.
“These seniors have been so unbelievably great and I could rave about them all day. The improvements they’ve made over the past three years have been so incredible to watch and it’s been so much fun being their coach. They all played with so much heart, played really well together and they love the game, as well as one another.”
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