FINALS BOUND
Fountain Lake heads to first state volleyball final
Fountain Lake returned home Thursday night in a position that it has never experienced before.
The Lady Cobras (18-3) will be playing on Saturday in the Class 3A state volleyball final, the first time that the team has advanced past the semifinal round in program history.
“We have never been to a final,” said head coach Tina Moore. “That has been my Achilles’ heel. We’ve been to close to 10 semifinals, and I made it. This is our first.
“This is big for all of us. Absolutely. People don’t realize that, just because we’ve always had such good teams and dominant teams in the past, but we have always been eliminated in the semifinal round.”
The team traveled back Thursday evening after the win, and Moore admitted that she was “tired.”
“I’m ready to get home,” she said. “We can get back on normal schedule tomorrow, kind of settle back in and then Saturday do our thing. So that’ll be a nice change.”
The Lady Cobras struggled a little coming out against Hoxie, who played a different defense than what they were used to seeing, but they quickly turned things around.
“I know we had several in the first 10, 15 points, probably several hitting errors,” she admitted. “I think that was a little bit of nerves, probably just caught up in the moment. Once we settled in though, we kind of just started, you know, kind of clicking away and then we just kind of ran away with it after that in the first set.”
Following a 25-21 win in the first set, the Lady Cobras never let the Lady Mustangs come close, winning the last
two sets, 25-17, 25-17.
“We got them out of their rhythm pretty good,” Moore said. “And then they were just kind of just, you know, grabbing at things. They kind of struggled after we, after we put the first set away, got frazzled. We made some good adjustments. They were running a man of defense, and we hadn’t really played that all year. So for us to get used to where to get to and where to put the ball was a little tricky on the front end, but once we figured that out, it just kind of settled in and went from there.”
Fountain Lake will face off against Episcopal Collegiate on
Saturday in the final.
“They are quite familiar,” Moore laughed, recalling her conversation with Episcopal head coach Monty Smith. “Both of us said, ‘Well, we won’t need to go hunt for scouting report games, so I think we’ll know what to deal with.’ Yeah, we’re just gonna bring in, I guess. Both of us are gonna put it out on the table and see if we can do it for a fourth time.”
The Lady Wildcats defeated Fountain Lake last Wednesday in the 3A South conference final, 3-2, after having defeated them 3-0 and 3-1 in games earlier in the season.
Tip-off Saturday is set for 5 p.m.