Star-Journbal Editor
The Hillsboro volleyball team overcame the heartache of a broken dream Saturday at the Bicentennial Center in Salina.
But even though they didn't win the state championship, the Trojans capped off a remarkable 35-3 season by winning third place at the Class 3A state tournament.
For senior players JuliAnne Chisholm, Tina Frick, and Jenny Whisenhunt, the two-day event was the culmination of their high school careers.
"It's still kind of a blur," Frick said Sunday. "It's like, 'Did that really happen?' We're all still trying to piece things together."
Whisenhunt agreed, saying, "We can all remember bits and pieces of it, but it was such an awesome experience, and it went really fast."
In addition to receiving bronze medals and a share of the third-place trophy, Chisholm and Frick also were named to the Kansas Volleyball Association All-State Tournament Team.
The entire squad can take pride in being part of one of the greatest teams in Hillsboro high school history.
The annals will show that the Trojans' three losses on the year were to the first and second place Class 3A teams, and to Moundridge (38-0), the Class 2A champion.
"There's nothing for us to hang our heads about," said coach Sandy Arnold. "We're still the third best team in the state in 3A and I'm very proud of the girls for the way they came back in that last match."
After winning the sub-state championship in their home gym two weeks ago, the Trojans (then 32-1) were the second-highest seed when the eight-team tournament began.
On Friday in Salina, qualifying teams were divided in two pools, and each team played three games.
As the top seed in Pool B, Hillsboro played its first match against seventh-seeded Silver Lake (24-9).
But with no player taller than 5-9 or so, Silver Lake looked to be no match for the taller Trojans. But the scrappy team played as if it had nine players on the court instead of six. Front line players blocked several thundering Trojan spikes, and the back line allowed few balls to hit the floor on that side of the net.
"We started off really cold, which wasn't good," Arnold said. "And their libero [a specialized defensive player] is really good. She gets her hand on every ball."
The Topeka-area team sneaked into the tournament with a deceptive win-loss record, because it had played against several larger schools.
But Hillsboro's 25-21, 25-23 loss to Silver Lake still came a shocking surprise to the Trojans, who had no way of knowing that they had been defeated by the eventual state champions. Instead, they thought the seventh-seeded team had upset them.
"Silver Lake is a strong program, and they've been to state quite a lot," Arnold said. "They have a lot of girls who play club volleyball. They play an up-tempo game with a lot of options."
With the defeat, Hillsboro had to win the next two matches, or miss a chance to play for the championship on Saturday.
There was some time to regroup before their second match, so the Trojan players retreated, alone, without their coaches, to the locker room.
"We went down there and thought about it," Frick said. "We'd been in this position at state before, in my sophomore year. It was pretty quiet, but we were all thinking the same thing."
Whisenhunt added, "We just realized, 'OK, we lost the first one, but we can win the next one.' We knew that if we were going to play on Saturday, we were going to have to beat the next two teams."
Focused and rejuvenated, Hillsboro was a different team in the second match, stopping Cheney 25-20, 25-18.
"The student section helped us a ton," Whisenhunt said. "We had a massive amount of support."
But to stay alive in the tournament, Hillsboro still had to defeat the hometown team, Salina Sacred Heart, which also had plenty of support.
Playing some of their best volleyball of the year in their most pressure-packed game, the Trojans defeated Sacred Heart, 25-22, 25-16.
In the locker room tunnel, the delirious Hillsboro team formed a circle to sing and dance the Hokey-pokey. The Trojans would play Saturday! That's what its all about!
Inspired, coach Arnold joined the circle of players and shouted, "People doubted our record! They doubted our league! They doubted everything about us!
"Now we're here to show them we're for real!"
The went to change for the bus ride back to Hillsboro, Arnold said, "I'm on cloud nine, maybe cloud 14. I'm just so proud of them for coming back after that first loss, because there was a little devastation going on."
Because it lost to Silver Lake, Hillsboro was forced to play Saturday's semifinal match against top-seeded Wellsville, winner of Pool A.
Wellsville won the first game of the match, 25-21.
Chisholm said afterward that the pre-game warm-up hadn't gone well, and in retrospect, the team wasn't ready to play.
"There wasn't much excitement," Chisholm said. "We really didn't have a chance to warm up our legs and stuff. It just felt a little scattered; not real focused."
The team's sluggishness was obvious to Arnold as well.
"Our warm-up was yucky," she said. "We could tell from the beginning. We weren't very loud. Our hits weren't going down the way we were expecting them to."
The Hillsboro football players who had been so vocal in their support Friday night were at football practice Saturday. Arnold felt the void, but rejected the notion that it had anything to do with the team's lackluster play.
"I don't know, maybe it was one of those cases when we wanted it so badly that we just didn't play up to our potential," Arnold said.
In the decisive second game, Hillsboro fell behind Wellsville two, three, and four points at a time.
"It's hard to come back out of that," Chisholm said. "Our defense just wasn't there. Our blocks weren't together."
Wellsville made short work of the entranced Trojans, 25-18. Tears flowed in the team huddle and in the stands. And just as suddenly, Hillsboro's season-long dream for a state championship was gone.
Scrappy Silver Lake defeated Osage City in the other semifinal, and would play Wellsville for the title. Hillsboro would play Osage City for third place.
With many of them still red-eyed from crying, the Trojans returned to the floor for their last match of the season.
Osage City won the first game, 27-25. But Hillsboro, in another must-win situation, took the second game, 25-23.
With the noise and emotion of the championship match spilling over from the other court, the consolation match that seemed so pointless before now meant everything.
Knowing that a win would redeem the tournament and the season, the Trojans won gloriously, 25-8.
"We were sick of having the games so close," Frick said. "So we just pounded them."
On the court after the initial hurrahs of victory, seniors Chisholm, Frick, and Whisenhunt looked at each other. And that's when another reality set in: Their high school volleyball careers were over. They'd probably never play together again.
"It didn't really hit us until after that game," Chisholm said. "And then it hit pretty hard."
Before getting their medals and trophy, Hillsboro had to stand and watch Silver Lake's dramatic third-game victory over Wellsville for the state title they'd hoped would be theirs.
"There's only two teams that win their last games at the end of the year, and that's the first place team and the third place team," Arnold said. "So you might as well take one if you can't have the other, I guess."
Frick agreed, saying, "All of us were wishing we had the championship, but being one of the top three teams in the state, we're pretty happy with that."
