Panther volleyball are Mountain Eight tournament champs.
Having routed East Henderson in Round 1, on the week of Oct. 13 the team returned to West Henderson for the conference playoff’s last two rounds. With thrilling wins over Brevard and West, Franklin claimed the M8 tournament crown.
On Monday the Panthers met Brevard in the semifinal, a rematch of two Franklin wins over the Blue Devils this regular season (3-1 in Transylvania County Aug. 26, and 3-0 in Franklin Sept. 18). There both teams looked evenly matched in the first, with Franklin leading 12-10 behind three kills from Audrey Pressley. From there the Panthers held the Devils at bay, winning 25-22 behind four kills from Emma Hatch.
Franklin kept rolling in the second, building a 16-9 lead behind three more Pressley kills. Ella Raby added four points in a 25-16 win.
Brevard regrouped in the third, sitting tied at 11 despite three straight kills from Hatch. From there the Blue Devils heated up down the stretch, winning 14 of the last 21 to claim the set 25-18. Brevard maintained their momentum in the fourth, winning 25-15 despite three points from Bristol Brooks.
Tied two sets to two, Franklin came back with a vengeance in the fifth, winning its first four points and nine of its first 10. Pressley and Finley Moffitt scored three points apiece en route to a 15-8 win.
“We played a decent third set – not good enough to win, but we played well,” said head coach Bekah Brooks after the match. “Fourth set, we don’t even want to talk about that. We were fixing some things, and [before] the fifth set we went into the lobby and I just said to them, ‘I can’t fix it – I’m not on the floor, y’all need to figure it out.’ I left them with that, and people had to step up and lead, and they did. … A few people talked and everybody listened, and man, what a great fifth set that was to end that night, which helped on into the rest of the tournament.”
In the lone fifth set they’ve played all year, Franklin saved their best for last, routing Brevard to advance to the conference final. After carrying their momentum into an excellent practice Tuesday, the Panthers returned to West Wednesday evening to meet the host team in the final. There the reigning 3A state champs posed a difficult test for the Panthers, having twice beaten Franklin 3-1 and ended their regular season as the state’s fourth-ranked 5A team.
Early on little separated the two teams, who sat tied at 13 despite three Pressley kills. Slowly the Panthers began to pull ahead, winning 25-23 behind four points from Moffitt.
Franklin stayed hot in the second, turning tough defense from Anna Stiles into a 23-17 lead. West refused to go quietly however, winning nine of the last 10 to claim the set 26-24.
The Panthers doubled their efforts in the third, taking a 16-11 lead behind three Pressley points. Raby added three straight kills to win 25-19.
Both teams engaged in a dogfight throughout the fourth, sitting tied at 24 despite six points from Pressley. From there Raby scored the biggest points of Franklin’s season, smashing two straight kills to win 26-24. After the final, Pressley was named to the All-Tournament team.
“It honestly was a dream – that’s how well they played,” said Brooks. “My father-in-law, who’s obviously no longer with us, used to tell me all the time, ‘It’s not luck, it’s preparation,’ and we did it. We prepared the best that we could to beat a team that beat us twice in-season in very tough games and are the defending state champs and number four in the state, and my girls just came ready to play – nothing fazed them. … We had one senior out there playing three rotations, and the rest are either juniors or sophomores, and honest-to-goodness I was so happy for them, because they earned that.”
Having battled West for conference supremacy in each of the last three years (including two years in the old Mountain Seven and again in this year’s Mountain Eight), the tournament title provided a milestone win for Franklin, ahead of the start of the state playoffs Oct. 18.
As part of the N.C. High School Athletic Association’s quadrennial realignment earlier this year, NCHSAA officials tweaked the state’s playoff format, including changes to the tournament seeding process as well as the brackets themselves. With a 25-3 overall record, Franklin entered the tournament as the 5A West’s third-ranked team, receiving one of the classification’s 16 first-round byes.
The Panthers hosted #14 Enka in a second-round match after press time Oct. 21, having beaten the Jets 3-0 in their second match of the regular season. With a signature win over one of the state’s best teams in hand, Brooks said the sky is the limit for her team in the state playoffs.
“I’m just super-proud,” she said. “You know, people have said, ‘Well, this year the tournament means nothing.’ It used to be that you could jump [rivals in the state playoff rankings based on conference tournament results], where they’re not doing that, they’re going off RPI [Rating Percentage Index, the state’s mathematical formula for ranking playoff fields based on the winning percentage of each team and their opponents], but man, it means something. It means something to us to beat the defending state champs; it means something to us to beat a team that usually, when we roll over there in that locker room and on that floor, we have to take a loss. It meant something. It meant something to these girls to know that they can beat that team with where they’ve been and what they’ve accomplished and how well that program is run. It meant something, and you could see it all over their faces.”