Rob Baker | For the Daily Journal
Attending a Center Grove-Franklin volleyball match usually requires a significant time commitment. No matter the result, getting to it can take a while.
The Trojans eventually got tired of waiting to claim their 10th consecutive Johnson County tournament championship, outlasting the always-formidable Grizzly Cubs for a 25-19, 22-25, 25-23, 25-19 triumph in Edinburgh on Thursday night.
“We’ve had a couple of battles — not just with them, but this year — where it just took the gut, the heart, not letting yourselves fall into the exhaustion feeling,” Center Grove coach Jennifer Hawk said. “Back-to-back matches are hard, so just kind of overcoming the physical side of it and letting the mental take over.”
Senior Sophia Sabol in particular had plenty of strength in reserve for the Trojans (22-3), especially in the biggest moments during the third and fourth sets.
Center Grove scored seven straight points, including two tip kills from setter Anabelle Schembra and two kills from Sabol, to seize a 13-8 advantage midway through the third. Franklin answered back, though, tying it at — of course — 15-15 on a tandem block from Aubrey Runyon and Brooklyn York and then taking a 17-16 lead on a hard kill from Scarlett Kimbrell. The Trojans reclaimed the upper hand, getting two more Sabol kills on the way to a 24-20 lead; the Grizzly Cubs got as close as 24-23 when Center Grove failed to return back-to-back serves, but an error on the next ended the comeback bid.
Franklin pulled ahead in the fourth set, 11-9, on kills from Kimbrell and Veronica Whitaker, before Sabol — who had just been hit with a yellow card by one of the officials — registered two kills in a row to tie it and spark a mini-run that ended with the Trojans holding a 16-12 lead.
“This game especially is personal to me,” Sabol said of the long-running rivalry with the Grizzly Cubs. “My dad (former Franklin girls basketball coach Josh Sabol) works there; he had a state runner-up championship there. So if someone’s going to do it, it’s going to be me. I felt like halfway through the game, I lit a fire under my ass, and I just played.”
Every time the Grizzly Cubs tried to erase the deficit, Center Grove had a reply. Zapp stretched it to 21-16 with a string of three kills in four points, and kills from Sabol and Reese Dunkle pushed Franklin to the edge of the cliff at 24-18. A Franklin attacking error ended the match.
“She’s a fighter,” Hawk said of Sabol. “She’s intense. She wants to win, and any part of a play she can make that happen she’s going to give her all, that’s for sure. She plays with a lot of heart, a lot of passion, and it shows.”
The opening set started out like nearly every other one the teams had played this season, with eight ties and five lead changes over the first 30 points. Franklin (18-6) rallied back from an early 10-4 deficit with six straight points, including a pair of service aces from Rose Mahin, to create one of those deadlocks, and the score was even again for the last time at 15-15 before Center Grove scored five of the next six points to pull ahead for good.
There were a dozen more ties in the second set, the last coming at 19-19, before the Grizzly Cubs pulled ahead courtesy of three straight attacking errors by the Trojans. An Ellen Zapp kill got Center Grove back within a point at 23-22 before Mahin answered with two of her own to knot the match at one set apiece.
Though this was his team’s third loss to the Trojans this fall, Franklin coach Pat Carlson thought his team acquitted itself well for most of the night.
“This was better volleyball, I thought, from both teams,” he said, referencing the previous two meetings. “It was better quality, cleaner; kids were exhausted. … I’m glad my kids didn’t back down.”
The Trojans advanced into the final with a 25-19, 25-16, 25-18 victory over Greenwood Christian. Franklin swept Whiteland in the other semifinal, 25-16, 25-19, 25-19.
