The goal of a conference championship remains to be conquered. The hunt for a perfect regular season, though, has ended for the Polk County Middle School volleyball team.
Ended, of course, perfectly.
The Wolverines completed the final match of their regular season schedule Wednesday just as they did the 11 previous encounters, sweeping their opponent – Flat Rock, in this case – in two games.
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With the 25-10, 25-11 victory at Polk Middle, the Wolverines completed a 12-0 season in which not only did they not lose a match, they didn’t drop a game, going 24-for-24 those 12 matches. No opponent scored more than 16 points in any of those 24 games, and Flat Rock was one of the few opponents that reached double digits in both games of a match.
Domination doesn’t hardly seem enough to describe the effort, which brought a second Blue Ridge Middle School Conference Eastern Division in the past three seasons to Polk County. The Wolverines begin chasing their first conference crown since 2008 on Monday in the opening round of the Blue Ridge postseason tournament. The Wolverines will host an opponent to be determined at 4:30 p.m.
“I thought we played well today,” said head coach Brandy Alm. “We always play intense. We are definitely excited about our first tournament game.”
A pattern emerged in both games Wednesday, with Flat Rock staying close early before a Polk County run turned each game definitively in the Wolverines’ favor.
In the first game, Flat Rock trailed just 9-7 when Alm opted for a timeout. From there, the Wolverines pushed the lead to 12-9 before reeling off nine unanswered points. Cameron Capozzi in the middle and Kendall Hall on the outside each had a pair of kills and Lauren Ketwitz had three aces in that run, which gave Polk a 21-9 lead. Hall then served an ace on game point for the 25-10 win.
The second game of the match saw Flat Rock open a 3-0 lead, Polk rally for a 6-3 edge, then Flat Rock fight back to trail just 11-10.
But Polk responded with the next 10 points of the match. Reagan Waddell served three aces in that streak, with Hall and Capozzi each adding kills as Polk either scored off attacks or forced Flat Rock into errors. The game, and match, ended on another Hall ace.
“I think one of the reasons we can make those long runs is because of our consistency serving,” Alm said. “We were very consistent serving today. Reagan had that long run and did a good job.”
