<p>BLOOMINGTON</p>
<p>No. 3 Providence, ranked 10th in the nation by MaxPreps, had ended Center Grove’s volleyball season in the Class 4A regional the last two years.</p>
<p>So how did the Trojans feel about breaking through for a five-set victory over the Pioneers in Saturday’s title match at Bloomington North?</p>
<p>"The best feeling in the entire world," senior outside hitter Anna Line said. "We just had been talking, ‘We need to get past this hump, we need to get past this hump,’ and worked past our mental obstacles. I just kept saying the whole game, ‘I’m not done, I know you’re not done; we’re going to fight through this.’ We pulled through, and it’s the best feeling in the entire world."</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
<p>Ninth-ranked Center Grove squandered an early two-set lead but regrouped to pull out a 25-21, 25-20, 19-25, 24-26, 15-10 victory. The Trojans (29-6) will now take on top-ranked New Castle at the Columbus East Semistate this Saturday afternoon.</p>
<p>Gathering themselves quickly after dropping the third and fourth sets, the Trojans scored six points in a row to jump out to a 6-2 lead in the final set. Providence picked up the next two points to cut the deficit in half, but Katie Egenolf responded with consecutive kills to restore the four-point edge.</p>
<p>The Pioneers (29-2) got to within three on three occasions, the last at 13-10, before Jamie Brown set up match point with a big kill. An attack from Providence star Ali Hornung went long on the next point, sending Center Grove to its first semistate since 2015.</p>
<p>Having nine seniors on the roster helped give the Trojans with a sense of calm going into that final set.</p>
<p>"You have a sense of maturity, and you realize it’s a decision about how you’re going to react," senior setter Madison Hammill said. "It’s no longer up to the other team; it’s up to what we have to do. And so I think after that fourth set, we just focused in and made that decision that we’ve practiced all year long for this, and we’ve practiced our entire high school careers, and everything leading up to this has just been about making a decision to change that."</p>
<p>"We knew that it was a 0-0 ball game, one game to 15," Center Grove coach Chris Due added. "They came out early with a couple of points, but then we got that momentum going and we didn’t look back. … They knew it was their time.</p>
<p>After Providence scored the first three points of the night, the teams settled in for a back-and-forth opening set that featured 10 ties and seven lead changes. The last of those came as part of an 8-1 Center Grove run that ended with a Brown kill to put the Trojans up 23-17. A kill from Line set up a game point, but Providence took the next three points to tighten it up before Egenolf delivered the decisive kill out of a timeout.</p>
<p>The Trojans never trailed in the second set but couldn’t get much separation until a run of three straight kills by Brown, Line and Hammill stretched the lead to 21-14. Providence got as close as four but could not erase the entire deficit.</p>
<p>"One thing that we had to do is just recognize what they do," Hammill said, "but then again focus on ourselves and focus on our game and our energy and getting out to a quick start, because we know that is important."</p>
<p>Desperate for a momentum shift, the Pioneers got one in the third when back-to-back blocks keyed a run that turned a 13-11 deficit into a 21-16 Providence lead. Courtney Glotzbach did much of the heavy lifting to keep Providence alive with eight kills in the set.</p>
<p>The Trojans trailed for most of the fourth set before a Grace Boggess block and an Egenolf kill put them in front for the first time at 21-19. But after a timeout, Providence scored the next three points to go ahead, and after ties at 22-22, 23-23 and 24-24, the Pioneers got kills from Anna Purichia and Hornung to force the decisive fifth.</p>
<p>In similar situations earlier this season, Due said, Center Grove might have folded. But on this night, with the season on the line, that didn’t happen.</p>
<p>"That’s definitely been a struggle this season, and I think we really pulled through with that this game," Line said. "Because we’ve had that struggle where we’ll start out really strong and then we’ll kind of back off, but we’ve gotten a lot more mentally tough throughout the last couple of weeks.</p>
<p>"We knew we were not done."</p>
<p>Egenolf led a balanced Center Grove attack with 14 kills, while Boggess finished with 13 and Brown had 11. Hammill dished out 43 assists.</p>
<p>Ashley Eck paced the back row with 19 digs. Rylie McMahen, Averie Baker and Reagan Thomas served up a pair of aces each.</p>
<p>The Trojans advanced to the final by sweeping Columbus East in the second semifinal match, 25-22, 25-17, 25-15. Center Grove rallied from a 19-16 deficit to take the first set, opened the second with a 9-2 lead and never looked back from there.</p>
