Lady Chargers do it again: Wilson Christian claims 12th NCCSA volleyball crown
WILMINGTON -— When Wilson Christian lost the first game of its North Carolina Christian School Association 2-A volleyball championship match to old foe Lexington Union Grove Christian, it was the moment for which the Lady Chargers had been preparing all season.
Undaunted, to say the least, Wilson Christian, the defending state champion and 2-A East top seed with a string of high-level matches outside the NCCSA, kicked into gear Saturday at Wilmington Christian.
“I think after the first set, after we got past it, we just took off and, I don’t know, something just clicked and we just started playing our hearts out and started encouraging each other, which is the most important thing,” said senior Jocelyn Bailey.
Wilson Christian head coach Ryan Vanderboegh credited his players for standing firm in the face of the opening onslaught by Union Grove.
“They responded really well,” he said. “They started to kind of like get a little down and I said, ‘Look, girls, they’re going completely on adrenaline.’ And you can just tell they were amped up and our girls were steady, which I liked. It wasn’t like (when) we were amped up the night before the semifinal, and they played great the first two sets and then they started really struggling third set because they’re out of juice. Well, our girls were real steady today. And so I called timeout, maybe my second timeout, and I said, ‘Girls, you just have to weather it. There is a storm, but they are going to run out of energy.’ And that second set, we kind of took over.”
The Lady Chargers ran off three straight games to avoid a troublesome fifth game and celebrated the program’s 12th state title.
“It feels amazing. Like I can’t even believe it,” gushed super senior Sophia Nesbit, who totaled a whopping 24 kills in her final game in a Wilson Christian volleyball uniform.
Getting it done in four was paramount to Wilson Christian, which had only gone five sets twice all season in splitting a pair with the Cary Crowns home school team and did not want to play five Saturday.
“No, we did not. Five sets are very stressful,” said Bailey, who finished with 10 kills and 12 digs.
Vanderboegh said in that decisive game 4 junior Emma Mercer made “the play of the tournament” with a block to break a 16-all tie. A few minutes later, the teams broke from a 22-all deadlock as WCA surged ahead by two points. Union Grove grabbed one back but, facing another set point, the Lady Chargers relied on a familiar routine of Bailey passing and junior Izzy Barnes setting for Nesbit.
“Everybody in the gym knew it was going to Sophia if we got the pass,” Vanderboegh said. “Jocelyn has a perfect pass to Izzy and it was a quick pass to Izzy, a quick set and Sophia hammers it home. It was fantastic.”
Barnes’ 38th assist and Nesbit’s 24th kill gave Wilson Christian its 11th straight victory as the Lady Chargers finished 17-5 with all five defeats coming against non-NCCSA opponents. September losses to North Carolina Independent Schools Athletic Association teams like Parrott Academy and Rocky Mount Academy as well as NCHSAA member East Wake Academy and vaunted home school programs New Life Camp and the Crowns left the Lady Chargers more than battle-tested, especially against Union Grove (26-5) and 5-foot-11 star junior outside hitter Katy Brauser.
The Patriots, seeded No. 3 from the West Region, and Lady Chargers go back a few years. Union Grove stopped WCA in the 2019 state final and the teams waged a memorable battle in what was considered an exhibition game during a midseason Christian school tournament in Pensacola, Florida. Union Grove earned its spot in Saturday’s final by toppling West No. 1 Tabernacle Christian in three games in the semifinals after slipping past host and East No. 2 Wilmington Christian in Thursday’s quarterfinals.
“I had a feeling that they were going to be the team because, overall in the west, even though they weren’t the higher seed, I could tell that they were the more dominating team,” Nesbit said.
And the presence of Brauser and her 402 kills coming into the match meant that Wilson Christian would have to be ready for a more dominating presence on the other side of the net, like the ones the Lady Chargers faced in those outside matches.
“There’s no doubt that that helped us in the long run,” Vanderboegh said. “The strength of schedule that we played early on because we saw multiple teams with hitters like Katy — now Katy’s as strong as any of them and she’s only a junior — but we saw hitters just like her and so the girls knew they could dig her. And they knew how to play against girls like that. If we had not played those strong teams, there’s no way we would beat them. We just wouldn’t have been ready for it. She would have overpowered us, and then it just allowed Sophia and some of our hitters to go against really good block, really good defense. So we just found the hole sometimes and there are some times we’re like, how did that ball not go down? And then they just were really, really scrappy. So it was fun both ways.”
High-flying senior Jocelyn Bailey (5) goes up for the hit during Saturday’s NCCSA 2-A championship match against Lexington Union Grove Christian played at Wilmington Christian. The Lady Chargers won in four sets. Nino Villaverde | Special to the Times
Junior Gracie Farmer supplied her usual all-around stat line with 17 digs, six kills and a pair of aces and Barnes added six digs, three kills and an ace. Junior Allie Smith came through with five kills.
But as always, it was the four seniors — Nesbit, Bailey, Kate Hoskins and Emma Robbins — who epitomized the team’s steady flow. Robbins came up with 10 digs while Hoskins had eight digs, a kill and an assist. Nesbit added three blocks, three aces and an assist.
The four seniors have been major cogs in all three WCA state finalists and will be tough to replace, Vanderboegh said.
“Jocelyn, Sophia and Emma and Kate, I mean just the leadership,” he said, looking for the right words. “They can’t, I mean, the semifinal, this just tells you what kind of girls they are. Semifinal, we beat Vandalia, and their good player No. 15, Kate immediately walks under the net, goes over and gives her a hug. And you know, they have a heart for people. They pulled out one of the middle school kids that was there and had her in the middle circle as they were getting ready to do a little jump at the beginning of the game. Had her in the middle of the group. They’re investing in these younger kids. They’re all about, I don’t know, they’re just all about other people. It’s hard to have so many girls that don’t care about themselves. They care about the team, you know, like they’re not worried about their individual stats. They’re just worried about winning. And so they’re a special, special group of seniors.”
