The Tipton-Rosemark Academy volleyball team may not win a state title this year and may not even make the state tournament.
However, Tuesday’s win at Goodpasture High School in Madison, Tenn. has already made the 2019 season a historic one.
TRA beat Webb School of Knoxville, the six-time defending state champs, in a wildly entertaining match (25-21, 20-25, 25-23, 22-25, 15-7). It was the first sub-state win in the program’s history.
After storming the court the Lady Rebels went to the locker room and kept celebrating.
“They went in there and screamed for a good three minutes,” said first-year TRA coach Amy Weatherington. “They kept saying, ‘We did it, we did it.’”
Rosemark now heads back to Madison for a second round sub-state match against Goodpasture, the number one seed from Middle Tennessee, Saturday at 6 p.m. Rosemark is the third seed from West Tennessee.
A win there would send Rosemark to Murfreesboro next week for the DII-A state tournament. Rosemark has never made it that far.
After Webb beat Rosemark in set four Tuesday, Rosemark’s players spoke their minds during the timeout.
“They kept saying, ‘We have to start off strong. We don’t want to have to make a comeback,’” Weatherington said. “They did more talking than I did at that point. They said, ‘Let’s make some history,’ and they did.”
Rosemark jumped out to an early lead and never trailed in the decisive fifth set.
Several players had huge matches on Tuesday.
Junior setter Sarah Allyn Thornell finished with 36 assists, 27 digs and 14 kills and senior Mary Leslie Cranford had a team-high 15 kills to go along with 15 digs. Junior Jordan Allen had 11 kills, most of which came in the fourth and fifth sets, and 18 digs. Sophomore libero Kayla Clement had 24 digs.
The Rosemark team and its fans and coaches are doing a lot of traveling these days. Weatherington hopes that continues.
“Ideally we will have to go to (the) Nashville (area) three times in two weeks,” she said. “That would be great.”
