MUNCIE – The Alexandria volleyball team came into Tuesday’s regional at Burris with only one team ranked ahead of it in Class 2A. The Owls came in only one game over .500.
Funny thing, it hardly looked that way when they took the Ball Gym court.
The play was close, but the Owls pulled off a 27-25, 25-19, 25-23 upset to upend the No. 2 Tigers. The win delivered Burris its first regional crown since 2010, a long gap for one of the premier volleyball programs in the state.
“Since it’s been a couple years, our main goal every year is to make it to state,” senior Burris hitter Taylor Kring said. “We spend the regular season as kind of a preseason for the tournament. This year, we came in the most prepared. We were prepared to fight.”
Burris will face Hammond Bishop Noll at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Bremen Semistate.
The Owls (18-16) ground ahead Tuesday bit by bit, surviving a close first set, pulling ahead early in the second and finally holding off the Tigers (27-9) late in the third.
From the start, Burris was clicked in. Libero Isabel Gothard (29 digs) anchored a strong defensive effort. The front line of Kring (eight kills), Taylor Harman (10 kills) Alyssa Peters (nine kills) and Anna Bilello (10 kills) put pressure on all parts of the Tiger defense, spiking down sets from Emily Brinkman (31 assists).
Even then, it was far from a comfortable win.
“Oh it’s nerve-wracking,” Harman said. “No amount of points was ever settling. Alexandria played hard. They fought back a lot of times, and we’d end up tied and then you’d panic.”
A big reason it wasn’t so easy was Alexandria freshman Megan Miller, who racked up 21 kills and delivered more than a few big digs. But as she raged against the dying of the light, it became clear a one-player show would not be near enough on this night.
“I thought we played well at times,” Alexandria coach Jeff Harmon said. “But we allowed the pushes.
“You can’t allow the big pushes, and we allowed Burris to get 3-5 point runs.”
Those Owls looked little like a team that struggled for much of the regular season and had to fight just to put away Shenandoah in sectionals.
One factor was Kring, who tore her ACL in the second match of the season, oddly against Alexandria. She came back two weeks ago, and Tuesday she was in a massive brace, playing for short stretches and giving all she could.
“She’s a champ,” Harman said.
Now this squad is in uncharted waters. The Owls seniors were in eighth grade the last time Burris made it this far in 2010, the last of 14 consecutive regional titles.
This team might seem like an unlikely one to pull it off, but Owls coach John Rodriguez said this change was no surprise.
“I think we had the exact regular season we wanted,” Rodriguez said. “We don’t worry about the regular season. We just use it to learn from every experience. We didn’t care about the record.”
Bremen Semistate
Saturday
• Semifinals: Burris vs. Hammond Bishop Noll, 11 a.m.; Adams Central vs. Southwood, 12:30 p.m.
• Finals: 6 p.m.
Taylor Harman