ARCANUM – The Arcanum volleyball team ran the table in the Western Ohio Athletic Conference for the 2nd straight year going 11-0 after defeating Newton 3-1 in four sets Tuesday night. The Trojans would three peat capturing their 3rdstraight WOAC Championship along the way.
Arcanum was all business in the first set pulling away from the Indians midway with some strong play at the net and good service for a 25-12 win.
Newton now 10-11 overall, 7-4 in WOAC have three seniors on their roster and a solid group of sophomores and juniors who have steadily improved as the season has progressed and wouldn’t go down without a fight in the second set.
They battled their way to a few ties midway in the set then took a four-point lead late and then fought off a late rally by Arcanum to take the 2nd set 25-23.
The Lady Indians kept the pressure on in the 3rd set before Arcanum again found their footing at the net to take the win 25-20.
It was senior night with a good crowd and support from the student section on hand bearing witness to the Lady Trojans taking the final set 25-14 to capture their third consecutive league championship.
“Give credit to Newton they played well early, we were coming off our homecoming weekend and having a couple of days off it took us a while, but we eventually settled in, and it was so exciting to see these girls finish off that last point in the fourth set to get back-to-back-to-back titles,’ coach Jacie Homan exclaimed.
Three titles in four years for the seniors is pretty special, and those seniors are Grace Psczulkoski, Grace Fry, Avery Leeper, Kamryn Beisner and Caroline Long.
“I’m so happy for this group of seniors it’s definitely something special to my heart, and I can’t really even talk about it right now, because it’s still a little overwhelming. But these girls have been with me since the beginning. They’ve seen the highs and the lows of Arcanum volleyball. They have just brought the energy that we need they are great role models to our underclassmen. They don’t tolerate a lot of monkey business in the gym. When we’re in the gym, we are locked in and ready to go, and I think that’s why we’re seeing the results,” Holman explained.
“I also give credit to the juniors as well, they’re getting used to this success, and I’m proud of them, and hopefully we can continue this with them and maybe they can go for a four-peat next year,” Holman added.
Coach Holman talked about the importance of locking in … but is also cognizant that it’s a game and you can’t get too uptight because it still should be fun.
“You know, when we were getting bad results, when we lost that second set, it’s because we were so tense and because we weren’t having fun. We haven’t had a lot of sets where we’ve been down, and we have to figure out how to balance that out. It took us just one set to recover and know, like, okay, that’s under our belt. Now we got to move forward. And that’s the kind of experience and mindset we’ll need for the tournament. We’re going to have tournament games we don’t win three straight sets and mentally we need to prepare for four or five sets,” Holman stated.
Although the Trojans want to enjoy the conference win there will be little time to celebrate as they prepare to play in the post season tournament where 17-4 Arcanum received the #1 seed in the OHSAA DVI Volleyball Tournament they will host at Arcanum High School.
“I’m very excited about our tournament draw, probably the most excited I’ve ever been. When we made that draw and I was scrolling down to see it I might have been jumping up and down in our classroom and crying. We are very excited about what we see moving forward for this team,” Holman concluded.
Arcanum start tournament play at 7pm on Wednesday October 15th vs National Trail.
The Trojans are serious, focused and motivated … but let’s just hope they also remember to have fun along the way.
