By Mike London
Salisbury Post
LANDIS — Carson head volleyball coach Kelan Rogers is always chasing perfection, pursuing a state championship, so he’s not easily satisfied.
He did acknowledge that it’s been a pretty nice season for the Cougars, who have an experienced group of players and a lot of seniors.
Carson was supposed to be good and has lived up to that.
The Cougars swept South Rowan in Wednesday’s South Piedmont Conference Tournament championship match, winning 25-17, 25-23 and 25-19.
“We’ve won 26 matches, we won our conference and now we’ve won the conference tournament,” Rogers said. “So that’s a good season. I’ve usually been pleased with how we’ve played and we did play exceptionally well as a team in the championship game. Chloe Webster stood out on defense, but a lot of people had good matches. We beat a good team for the third time and we beat them on their court for the second time.”
Carson has dealt with a few injuries, but Carson is deep. Rogers always plays a lot of people, and he’s even used jayvees in critical spots.
“If you’re on our bench, you’re probably going to play at some point, so be ready,” Rogers said. “Whenever we win, a lot of girls had a hand in it. When we lose, I’ll take the blame. We play more girls than most teams. We have front row specialists and we have back row specialists. Our digs are pretty spread out. Our kills are pretty spread out.”
Carson is 26-3. Two of those losses, Rogers shrugged off pretty quickly. The third one — at East Rowan — still aggravates him and probably will for the next 10 years or so.
“We lost twice in tournaments very early this season and those two teams were better than us,” Rogers said. “We should not lose to East Rowan, but we had a bad day and East had a great day.”
Specifically, East’s Leigan Lusk played the match of her life and propelled the Mustangs to an upset victory. East is good and South is good and West is good, but no one expected anyone in the SPC to beat Carson this year. Carson went 13-1 in the league.
“I will say that we had a good league this year, and we realized there were teams good enough to beat us if we weren’t at our best,” Rogers said. “The biggest difference in the SPC this year was Concord and Robinson. Those teams played volleyball this year. By that I mean that in past years, they didn’t score unless we made an error. This year, they earned a lot of their points.”
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Conference championships are great and tournament championship trophies are great, but the playoffs are what people will remember.
All five of the Rowan schools in the SPC made the playoff brackets, which look much different this year. Instead of 32-team brackets, the brackets are limited to 24 teams, with the top eight seeds (based on RPI) in each bracket receiving byes.
Seeds and pairings were announced by the NCHSAA on Thursday.
The playoffs start on Saturday, the 18th. The second round is next Tuesday, the 21st. The third round is next Thursday, the 23rd. Things happen quickly in volleyball once the playoffs start.
Carson is a No. 2 seed in the 5A playoffs, so the Cougars not only earned a bye, they’ll play at home for at least four rounds if they can keep winning.
Carson will play the winner of the (15) Concord vs. (18) North Henderson match in Round 2.
East Rowan (18-11) is a No. 7 seed for the 5A playoffs, so the Mustangs also will have a first-round bye.
East’s first playoff match will be against the winner of the (10) Smoky Mountain vs. (23) Atkins match.
West Rowan (11-10) is a No. 11 seed and will play a first-round home match against No. 22 High Point Central.
South Rowan is (19-6) seeded sixth in the 4A playoffs and has a first-round bye. The Raiders will play the winner of the first-round match between (22) Salisbury and (11) Stuart Cramer. The Hornets (5-18) will be traveling to the Belmont/Cramerton area for that match. The Hornets won one SPC match this season, beating Concord in five sets.
A.L. Brown (12-12) made the 7A playoffs and is an 18 seed. The Wonders will travel to Greensboro to play (15) Page.
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In the SPC tourney championship match against Carson, South got 13 kills from Avery Fisher, nine from Cressley Patterson and six from Clancy Street. Campbell Withers had 20 digs. Fisher had 15 and Raegan Shell had 11. Meghan Eagle had 13 assists.
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West Rowan won a set against Carson in the tournament semifinals, losing 25-17, 25-14, 23-25 and 25-9. Lydia Wilson had 19 kills and 33 digs for the Falcons. Raney Phelps had 10 kills. Ava Baxter had three aces. Clary Graham had 16 digs. Reese Poole had 14 digs, and Baxter had 11. Brinley Hiatt had 28 assists.
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South swept East 25-15, 25-17 and 25-22 in the semifinals, beating the Mustangs for the third time.
Patterson had seven kills for the Raiders, Fisher had six, and Eagle and Danica Krieg had five. Fisher and Shell had four aces. Krieg had three blocks. Fisher led in digs with 10.
Alli Corl had 15 kills for the Mustangs, surpassing 1,000 for her career. Lusk had four blocks. Jacee Eudy had 12 digs, while Jordan Dry had 10. Jacee Eudy had 16 assists.
