Oct 22, 2020 3 min read

WAYNESBURG – If these two teams played 100 times, the split would be 50-50. That’s how close they are in talent.

But, oh, what a lot of good volleyball there would be to watch.

Waynesburg High School, behind some good back line play, stifled a talented Carmichaels team, 18-25, 27-25, 25-23, and 25-19.

The win keeps Waynesburg undefeated in Section 3-AA and a win over Beth-Center today would probably give them a top four seed for the playoffs.

“This was probably the biggest win we had,” said Waynesburg head coach Dan Higinbotham. “I’ll leave the ranking to the (WPIAL). We took Avonworth to five games last year. So that is our goal, get past the first round. We’ve always won our play-in games but we could’t get past the first round.”

Wayneburg has made the playoffs for the past five years but have been stuck in the first round all five times.

Waynesburg, which beat Carmichaels (10-2 in the section) earlier this season in five games, got off to slow start in the first game.

The two teams traded points until it was 16-16. Then, Carmichaels got hot and made a run, winning nine of the last 11 points for a 25-19 win.

Waynesburg did the same thing to Carmichaels in the second game, giving up a 9-1 run to the Mikes before righting the ship and taking a 27-25 victory.

Waynesburg began to take control in the third game, scoring nine of the last 13 points for a nail-biting 25-23 win.

It was all Waynesburg in the fourth game as the Raiders scored the final seven points for a 25-19 victory that gave them the match.

“You just have to stay consistent,” said Waynesburg’s Emma Robinson. “You just have to whatever you can to get the ball up. The have some big blockers but you just have to get the ball over them.”

Robinson said you have to have confidence in yourself to beat a team as good as Carmichaels.

“You have to get through all the hard points,” Robinson said. “You just have to stay confident.”

The Mikes held a 17-12 lead in that last game before falling apart.

“I don’t think we made too many net mistakes,” said Carmichaels head coach Julianne Speeney. “I think we just lost our aggressiveness. They are high school girls. To me, Waynesburg did an excellent job. They went after wild balls and made great plays on them. We did not capitalize on that and that’s why we shot ourselves in the foot.”

Carmichaels moved up to Class AA this season and Speeney expects the team to get an eight or nine seed in the playoffs.