Story by Doug Roorbach/The Sports Herald—
The fourth time was finally the charm for Madison-Grant Saturday night. After dropping three previous matches this year to Alexandria, the Argylls took the sectional title on the Tigers’ home floor in five tightly contested sets by the scores of 24-26, 25-18, 25-20, 26-28 and 15-9.
“When you’re used to winning and then you lose to someone like Alexandria, it hurts,” Robert Holloway, Madison-Grant’s head coach, said.
Outside hitter Maddie Barnhart agreed. “We all came together and we communicated real well. They beat us three times, so we were just all ready to go and get them back,” she said.
“We did change some things up,” said Holloway. He noted that the team had changed its formation to receive serve, especially from Alexandria’s Megan Miller and Blaine Kelly.
Holloway also encouraged his girls to throw in some soft, short serves, “Just to throw them out of rhythm, they’re a very rhythmic team,” he said. “…Stuff we didn’t do much in the previous matches.”
The match’s rhythms were dictated by the play and position of Miller, Alexandria’s powerful outside hitter. When she was in the front row, the Tigers set for her repeatedly, and the Argylls struggled to stay even. When she was in the back row, Madison-Grant could pull ahead.
“One of the things we talked to our players about was: ‘Don’t make bone-headed plays when she’s in the back row,’” Holloway said, “Because she’s so good, you just want to keep her in the back row.”
The Argylls made it a point to defend any back row attacks from Miller, too. “I thought we did a great job of passing her back row attacks,” said Holloway. “because she usually gets a lot of points from back row attacks, and I thought we did a real good job of that.”
“Their defense was superior to ours tonight,” said Jeff Harmon, head coach of Alexandria, “Madison-Grant’s defense was just so much better than ours, so much better; not a little, a lot better.
“Bob [Holloway, Madison-Grant’s head coach] said he wanted to play well when Megan [Miller] was in the back row, our philosophy is the opposite: we want Megan to play well and we want a three-point lead when she goes in the back row.
“They passed her well and their girls up front got a lot of touches on her,” Harmon said.
The statistics confirmed Miller’s role for the Tigers. In the first and fourth sets, which Alexandria won, she had six kills in each. In the second and third sets, she had just two in each.
Given all that, though, the Argylls still faced an uphill struggle after losing three straight points to drop the fourth set, 26-28. “At that point I felt like we played a little not to lose; we didn’t play very smart,” Holloway said, “I was all over Mal [outside hitter Mallorie Havens], who’s our best player, and she made two errors right there at the beginning of the fifth set…She did stay aggressive and she hit a couple of nice serves at the end.”
“In the beginning [of the fifth set], we were kind of scatter-brained because of what just happened, and we needed to pull ourselves together again,” said Havens.
“We just needed to relax and focus and do what we know how to do,” Havens said, “We needed to regroup and pull ourselves together and play like a team again.”
“I was getting real scared,” said Barnhart, “but I thought ‘You know what, if we’re going down, we’re going down swinging,’ so why not?”
She had two quick kills early on and kept sending spike after spike at Alexandria’s defense. Havens got untracked, too, recording three kills in the final set.
“We’ve been working on that…We said ‘We’re going all in. It’s time to go,’” said Barnhart.
“We overcame our reputation of how we’ve played in the past,” said Havens, “and it feels so good.”
Madison-Grant was the only Grant County high school team to take a sectional title Saturday. Mississinewa lost to Bellmont in the finals of the Norwell sectional in four sets (25-14, 25-19, 25-27, 25-19) and Oak Hill fell in the semifinals to the host team in the Southwood sectional (25-16, 25-21, 25-15).
Earlier in the day, Madison-Grant and Eastbrook met in an all-Grant County semifinal at the Alexandria sectional. The Argylls rolled, 25-10, 25-12, 25-14, to earn their spot in the final Saturday night.
“I thought we played pretty well,” said Holloway, “We had a little trouble with them before, like when we played them in Grant Four a few weeks ago…so for us to win as comfortably as we did was a pretty good sign. I thought we were ready to play.”
Panther Head Coach Erin Luthy agreed. “We came out a little timid,” Luthy said, “Maybe we were intimidated by this being the sectional…We made a few mistakes and got down early and then we were playing defense to their offense the rest of the game.”
The Panthers finish their season at 11-15.
Madison-Grant will host Wapahani in the regional on Tuesday night at 7.
Sorry photos are not for sale due to IHSAA rules.
