Highland senior Camryn Miller goes to the floor to receive the ball from Ontario on Tuesday in her team’s 3-0 volleyball win. With that decision, the Scots earned a share of the MOAC title — their 11th straight conference championship.
Rob Hamilton | Morrow County Sentinel
For the 11th straight year, the Highland volleyball team finished its regular season with at least a share of their league title.
In defeating Ontario 25-18, 26-24 and 25-19 at home on Tuesday, the Scots improved to 12-2 in MOAC play — good enough to share the league championship with Galion.
Getting another title wasn’t an easy task for Highland. The team fell at Galion earlier in the year and then fell at Shelby later on to give them a second league loss. However, they received some unexpected help when Ontario won at Galion. After that, the Scots were able to handle their business.
“When we lost to Shelby, that was a tough moment in the locker room because we didn’t know at that point Galion had lost to Ontario,” said Scot head coach Rob Terrill. “So that was a gift, but then we had to take care of business two days later (against Galion) and we did. We beat them 3-0 here and that put us right back where we wanted to be.”
While the coach noted that having a young team with only two seniors has led to its share of challenges, their willingness to learn has been a huge boost.
“They’ve been very coachable,” he said. “Like that one time out, I had to really get on them because we weren’t playing the way they were capable of playing and they went out there and made a good run and took care of them, so I love that they’re coachable.”
One of those seniors, Libero Camryn Miller, added that the team used their youth as motivation, feeling like they might be being overlooked a bit after graduating a number of key competitors from last year’s regional-qualifying team.
“I think it really just confirmed to all the girls that we can accomplish anything no matter what,” she said. “Going into the season, everyone looked down on us. We were short, we lost most of our varsity starting line-up and it just really instilled confidence in us to come out on top.”
That confidence was on display in a first set that the Scots mostly dominated. After both teams’ first turn through the serving rotation, Highland was in front by a 16-8 score with Miller scoring three points and Larsen Terrill, Savanna Sanborn and MaKaylee Merckling all adding two. Three more points by Terrill would make it an 11-point lead and, while the Warriors would battle back down the stretch, the Scots would not be seriously threatened in taking the lead.
They would get out to a fast start in the second set, with three points by Miller and two from Kameron Stover allowing them to open up a 9-4 lead, but Ontario would battle back to tie things up at 15 and 21 points.
Leading 22-21, Highland got two scoring serves by Merckling to reach set point, but gave up a defensive point and two straight successful serves to be tied again at 24. The Scots would recover, though, to get a stop and then an Addison Mullins point for the win and 2-0 lead in the match.
Highland would then have to fight back from a deficit to win the third set. Trailing 11-8, they got a defensive point followed by three from Terrill to take a one-point lead. Sanborn would then add two and Miller scored one to make it 17-13.
Ontario would keep it close, using a late three-point run to get within a 21-19 count, but the Scots finished with four in row — three off Terrill’s serving — to keep their historic league title streak going.
Miller felt her team deserved that 11th title, noting that collecting MOAC wins was not an easy task this year.
“I feel like we definitely deserved it,” she said. “We all worked hard and going into the season, we knew it was going to be tough because there were lots of changes with the teams and a lot of new girls.”
Coach Terrill agreed that the league was tough this year — something that, along with Highland’s challenging non-conference schedule, he hopes will pay dividends in the postseason.
“Shelby beat us at home, Ontario beat Galion at home, Pleasant takes both of us to five sets and took Galion there twice,” he said. “That second level of the league has really picked themselves up. Even at the bottom of the league as far as the standings because they’re all very capable of pushing you every single night if you’re not ready. I mean, Harding went 22, 22 the last two sets when we played there. It’s really made the league stronger and we’ll see if that pays off in tournaments.”
Rob Hamilton can be reached at 419-946-3010, ext. 1807. Connect with him on Twitter at @SportsMCS
