By REID TUCKER and PATRICK CASEY
Before about 4 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 8, no South Walton team had ever beaten Baker in a volleyball contest, regular season or otherwise. The Lady Gators, on the other hand, were riding high on a 19-3 record and their umpteenth straight district championship going into the post-season, with hopes of a third repeat trip to the Class A state finals.
Fate had something else in store.
South Walton (14-10) easily grabbed the first set 25-16, but Baker won the next two, handing the home team a stinging 25-15 loss followed by a 26-24 nail-biter. That second Baker win proved to be a Pyrrhic victory, as the fourth set wholly belonged to the Lady Seahawks, who seemed rejuvenated and doubly determined to snatch a history-making triumph on the chilly afternoon while their foes’ energy was visibly sapped. South Walton cruised through the fourth set with a 25-16 win before jumping ahead early to grab a 15-9 fifth set to end the grueling marathon that was the Region 1-A final match.
Though led from the front row by the combined 33 kills and 17 aces of junior Belle Waldrop and sophomore Maddie Cope, and the 47 assists of junior Laura Andrews, Lady Seahawks head coach Andrew Hock said his team won the day because of its mental strength. What’s more, South Walton wanted to get revenge for the last two years, as both the 2012 and 2013 seasons ended at the hands of the Gators.
“This match is the first time South Walton has ever beaten [Baker] in volleyball, and we wanted this year to be the year we did that,” Hock said. “Our girls were up to the mental challenge and they came out and played the way they had to in order to win. We knew we had the skills to win, so we had to prepare most of all to win the mental game first. If we could do that, a win on the court would follow.”
Follow it did indeed, as South Walton came back from a short deficit in the first set to tie the game 13-all, only to surge ahead by a 12-3 margin to take the win thanks to Baker miscues and windmill swings from Waldrop (24 kills, five aces) and Cope (12 kills, nine aces). The inner fortitude spoken of by Hock came into play in the middle sets, as Baker easily powered ahead after an early 4-4 tie to blast South Walton by a 10-point margin in the second game. Set three was a much closer affair, with Baker’s Ashley Black making the most of her 11 kills to put the Lady Gators on track to take the game, but South Walton tied the game 24-all, forcing the road team to count on Seahawk fouls to win by two.
The tightness of the third set proved to Baker’s undoing. South Walton went up 8-3 at the start of the fourth and never looked back, as Waldrop, backed up by Olivia Sanders (three kills), Laura Andrews (three kills) and Cope, utterly dominated the Gators to win by 10. Baker’s momentum plainly waned in set five, which, despite some nice blocks from Kelsee McGraw, was again a tale of the Seahawks’ overwhelming pressure on offense: South Walton got ahead 5-4 then went on a 10-5 tear to win the match in convincing fashion.
It took another five-set battle for the Lady Seahawks to make it to the regional final. South Walton hosted the Chipley Lady Tigers (17-8) on the night of Tuesday, Nov. 4, and fought hard to get the win by scores of 25-17, 25-19, 23-25, 23-25, 16-14. They rallied from a 13-10 deficit in the final set behind the serves of Waldrop and Laura Andrews to grab the victory.
Waldrop keyed a first set victory as the Seahawks broke a 9-all tie with strong play at the net to pull away to a 20-15 lead that eventually became a 25-17 victory. The Seahawks fed off the energy of the home crowd to pull ahead 15-10 in the second set as Waldrop continued to deliver kills with Andrews providing the sets. Junior Olivia Sanders helped the Seahawks overcome 10 service errors in the first two games to pick up a 25-19 win in the second set.
Chipley weathered the early momentum that favored the Seahawks and began to chip a way back into the match in the third set. The Tigers began moving the ball around the perimeter but trailed 18-14 as the Seahawks’ Margo Harrison helped the squad move towards a sweep. Chipley would have nothing of it, as senior Jayde Smelcer helped the Tigers to several key blocks to knot the match at 23-all before Chipley scored 11 of the final 16 points in the third set to hold off elimination with a 25-23 victory.
Chipley continued to get blocks at the net from Smelcer as the Seahawks pounded away in the fourth set. Neither team could garner more than a two-point lead after a 5-all tie that trudged its way to a 22-all score late in the set. A Waldrop kill shot put South Walton up 22-21 but the Tigers took four of the next five points to extend the match with another 25-23 victory.
The fifth set saw points traded back and forth as the match was knotted at 8-all with the Tigers taking four of the next five points for a 12-9 lead. The Seahawks came back, and when Andrews placed a toss shot to the opposite side of the Chipley defense, the score was tied at 14-all. Andrews then served for the next two points with the Tigers struggling to get the ball back both times, leading to a 16-14 win and setting off a celebration by the host squad.
South Walton is 3-2 in state playoff games, with all three appearances coming in the last three seasons under co-coaches Michael Emerick and Andrew Hock. The Seahawks are 41-28 overall in their last three seasons of competition. South Walton becomes the first Walton County volleyball program to make it to the Final Four in the sport.
The Seahawks have a tough match-up in the semi-final as they take on defending state champion Sneads (23-5). The Pirates have not lost to a Class A squad this season and have been in the playoffs for 11 straight seasons, winning the title last year and finishing second in 2011 under coach Sheila Roberts. The Pirates have just one senior on their roster and seven juniors while South Walton has two seniors that will play in their final game in Kissimmee, Olivia Kolovich and Kaleigh Miller.
