When this countdown series started in November, there was virtually no question that Cedar Ridge volleyball’s upset of Chapel Hill would claim the top spot.
Here’s a larger question: was this Cedar Ridge’s biggest regular season win in any sport since they jumped to 3A in 2014?
I think you can say it is.
Certainly Cedar Ridge women’s tennis Big 8 Conference championship had some big wins in the regular season, including two against Chapel Hill. But the Tigers didn’t even make the playoffs that year.
Cedar Ridge softball has won consecutive softball conference championships in 2018 and 2019. They defeated Eastern Alamance to start the 2018 season, and the Eagles would go on to win the 2019 3A State Championship. But that 2018 team didn’t have Kenna Rae Dark pitching for it. The 2019 team did, and that’s a big difference.
Going into its match against Chapel Hill on September 10, Cedar Ridge volleyball had just suffered its first loss of the season the night before against Jordan in Durham.
The Tigers, with seven seniors, were powered by the finishing skills of Kaya Merkler (who finished with 423 kills this season), Julia Charney (204 kills) and Courtney Zwikker, the daughter of former UNC basketball center Serge Zwikker.
Cedar Ridge was powered by freshmen. Skilled freshmen like Cameron Lloyd, Julie Altieri and Cameron Lanier. They had led the Red Wolves to a 6-1 start, but could they stay on the same floor against a Chapel Hill team that had played for the 3A Eastern Regional championship the year before? And played for the state title the year before that?
The answer was yes.
A tight first set proved predictive of how the rest of the match would be. No team led by more than four, and Chapel Hill battled back from two different deficits to level the score at 20-all and 22-all before Cedar Ridge took three of the final four points. As a Tiger hit the ball into her half of the net to clinch the first frame for the home team, the first drop of reality seemed to set in on the Cedar Ridge sideline – maybe this really could happen.
Chapel Hill won sets two and three.
As the page turned to the fourth set, the left-side success Merkler and fellow senior outside Julia Charney had in the second and third sets started to dry up, thanks in large part to an improved Cedar Ridge block anchored by freshman Cameron Lanier. But while Lanier’s performance at the net was notable, her effort at the service line bordered on legendary. With set four even at 8 apiece, Lanier head back behind the line and steered her team to a 7-0 run, with five of those points coming from Lanier aces. Chapel Hill finally sided her out and battled back to level the set at 23, but then the other two standout Red Wolf freshmen came through – setter Julie Altieri delivered a setter kill for set point, and outside Cameron Lloyd did the rest by tooling the block to tie the match.
By the time the fifth set arrived, much of the crowd that remained got to its feet. Chapel Hill held the advantage in the early going, but never led by more than two. The visitors were first to what Seethaler conceded was that pivotal tenth point, but with the Tigers ahead 11-10, Lanier stepped back to the line and delivered two more service aces to flip the script. Chapel Hill coach Ross Fields called a timeout. The teams traded points, as Merkler finished off another back row kill to make it 13-12 Cedar Ridge. From there, the Red Wolves’ gameplan was simple: feed Cameron Lloyd. It had worked all season, it had worked all game, and it worked when it mattered most: Lloyd delivered the game’s final two kills, both set up by Altieri, placing the match-winning point precariously over the net, pinpointing it into the middle of the back row for a 15-12, five-set victory.
Cedar Ridge would be the only team to beat Chapel Hill the entire season. The Tigers would lose only two sets for the rest of the regular season. From September 17 to October 22, the Tigers didn’t lose a set, a span of 12 matches. On November 9, they defeated West Henderson 3-1 to win the elusive state championship.
Cedar Ridge’s season ended after the first round of the 3A State Playoffs against Terry Sanford. But Red Wolves Coach Anna Seethaler has had to spend part of this winter thinking back to one night in September where her team beat the very best in the state.
And she has to be smiling about the future, as well.