By Mike London
Salisbury Post
LANDIS — Like basketball, volleyball is a game played both in the air and on the floor.
The high-flying kills are the most noticeable part of the game, the fun part, the stuff that highlight tapes and YouTube videos are made of.
Rowan County has some serious trapeze artists right now, athletes like Carson’s Reese Joyner, who reached 1,000 career kills recently, and East Rowan’s Alli Corl, a High School OT Athlete of the Week. Corl, 6 feet tall, and Joyner, 5-foot-10, are wonder women who look like they are soaring toward the ceiling of the gym. They can smash volleyballs from impossible angles.
South Rowan’s kills are as widely scattered as the clouds on a bright summer day, and you never know who might get the next one, but the Raiders have hung in there against powerful county adversaries. They’ve rallied to beat East twice, and since the Mustangs were able to split with the Cougars, South will play Carson in a match to decide the South Piedmont Conference next Tuesday.
Carson is 21-3. South is 16-4, but on a roll. The Raiders haven’t lost since the last time they ran into the Cougars.
“We had a shaky start in our second match with East, they’re very good, and they won the first set, but we were able to come back against them for the second time this season,” South libero Campbell Withers said. “We’ve got a lot of seniors. By the time you’re a senior, you learn how to keep your composure in the toughest situations. East was a very big win for us. Now we’re in position to play Carson for the conference. This is where we wanted to be at this point of the season — playing for a championship.”
Half the game is defense. As the libero, Withers is the rock on the back row of South’s defensive effort. She recently reached the milestone of 1,500 career kills and she has committed to Erskine College. She keeps a lot of balls off the floor, and she communicates.
Those balls she keeps in play are counted as digs, but despite all her digs, her biggest strength might be serve-receive, the most underrated stat of all. Most kills start with a good pass, and Withers is a precision passer to one of South’s two setters.
“Campbell is that textbook libero,” said Cox Mill coach Jan Dowling, who has coached Withers in club volleyball. “She is fundamentally great. She is a money passer in serve receive. When I coached against her when I was at West Rowan, we tried hard to hit it to someone else. She’s a great girl, great attitude, and the only complaint I ever had about her, is I wanted her to be more vocal. The libero has to take charge of everything on the back row.”
Withers is not naturally loud, but she’s made some strides in that area as a senior. Her voice is getting more forceful. She’s attacking the ball more.
When Withers was in the fifth grade, Heidi Shell, who is South’s jayvee coach and varsity assistant, put together a group of athletes and started teaching them how to play volleyball. They were raw, talented kids who were good at other sports. They learned their lessons and put the work in. They became volleyball players. Shell told Withers then that she would be an ideal libero for South one day.
Jenna Horne has been South’s head coach for more than a decade and gets to coach Withers now.
“Team captain for two years,” Horne said. “Hard-working and disciplined and she sets a great example for our younger players. She’s a tremendous asset in that she can react to hitters and make in-match adjustments. She’s done so much as far as shaping this team’s identity and building the team’s winning culture with her dedication and her leadership. Especially as a senior, I think she’s inspired her teammates.”
Withers is a star who plays volleyball on the floor. She stands a modest 5-foot-4 and doesn’t have springs in her sneakers. But she does a lot to help South win matches.
“I became South’s libero as a freshman, so I set the goal of getting 1,000 career digs,” Withers said. “I got to 1,000 as a junior, so I had to start thinking bigger. I set a new goal. Now I’ve reached 1,500. I won’t make it to 2,000, but maybe I can get 1,700.”
Withers knows she can’t win every battle with players such as Joyner and Corl. The goal is to win some of them. The goal is to win more than most girls could.
“Players as good as Alli and Reese, they’re going to get their kills,” Withers said. “There’s not a lot you can do about that. You try to read their arm position and their swing and get your feet in the right position. If you do that, you’ll get some digs. The most important thing is when they do get a kill, and the crowd gets loud, you can’t get down about it. You have to maintain your composure. You’ve got to think, ‘OK, next ball. Hit it to me. I’ll get the next one.”
In her younger days, Withers’ dream was to be a college softball player. Volleyball eventually surpassed softball on her priority list, but all those days on the softball diamond weren’t wasted.
“My softball coaches taught me things about competing, about bouncing back, about overcoming adversity,” Withers said. “There are a lot of things I learned that I still use every day to help me with volleyball.”
Withers is making a lot of memories as a senior, as her twin sister, Cailynn, is a defensive specialist who is often playing next to her. When a ball is hit between them, Campbell takes it, as she should, and both girls are fine with that.
“Cailynn has had a good volleyball season,” Campbell said. “She’s a soccer player first, that’s her sport, and she’s great at it, but she’s made the difference in quite a few volleyball matches for us. We lost to Carson (3-1) the first time we played them, but she had one of her best matches.”
Withers’ commitment to Erskine came recently. Erskine coaches saw her in some club tournaments and liked what they saw, and Withers is an exceptional student, so that wasn’t an obstacle.
The coach at Erskine is Kelly Burdeau, who played at Catawba College. Burdeau got her college coaching start in a tough situation at Brevard, but she made the Tornados better. She coached at University of Arkansas-Monticello after that, and then arrived at Erskine seven years ago. She knows Dowling and the South coaches well, so Withers was a natural fit for her program.
The scenic Division II school has a leafy campus and is located in the map-dot town of Due West, S.C. Ask people where Due West is, and they’ll tell you it’s close to Abbeville, although that probably doesn’t help much.
Due West isn’t really due west from anything. It’s about 45 miles from Greenville and 80 miles from Columbia. It’s pretty far west in South Carolina. It’s closer to Atlanta than to Charleston.
“I really preferred a small school and going to a Christian-based school like Erskine was important to me,” Withers said. “Erskine has a nice campus and the girls and the coaches treated me like family when I visited there. It felt like home, and it means four more years of getting to play volleyball.”
Volleyball has become a huge part of Withers’ life, but certainly not all of it. She has a steady boyfriend (Carson athlete Maverick Walters) and hopes to have a nursing career.
“I’ve been lucky enough to have her in AP Math class,” Horne said. “I can tell you she works just as hard in the classroom as she does on the court.”
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