Is this Orange volleyball’s time?
In the past ten years, Cedar Ridge, Chapel Hill, East Chapel Hill and Carrboro have all won conference championships in volleyball. Orange has been the odd team out.
The Lady Panthers have teetered on the edge of a championship before. For four straight years in the mid-2000s, Orange finished in second place as a 2A team. The problem was Cardinal Gibbons was a 2A team, too, and they finished ahead of the Lady Panthers each time.
Kelly Young was a player on those Orange teams. When she became Orange head coach in 2018, she took aim at Chapel Hill, the top dogs of the Big 8 Conference, where the Lady Panthers resided at the time.
Orange would beat Chapel Hill during the pandemic season of 2020. Cedar Ridge, however, had the firepower to become the most successful volleyball team in Hillsborough history, winning three straight conference championships and the 2021 3A State title. Last year, Orange was the only team from the CCC to take a set from the Red Wolves, but it didn’t stop Cedar Ridge from winning another league crown and reaching the Eastern Regional Championship match for the second straight year.
Plenty has changed across the CCC since then, including at Orange. Young stepped down as head coach and is now an assistant at Eno River Academy. Hope Heverly, who served three years as Person head coach from 2012-2014, returned to the high school ranks last week.
After a fifth-place finish at the East Chapel Hill Invitational, the Lady Panthers finished off an undefeated week with a 3-1 victory over Falls Lake in Creedmoor on Thursday night. The Firebirds came into the match ranked as the #1 team in the 1A East RPI rankings, but Orange handed them its first loss of the season.
This week, Orange completed a swing of six matches in six days (all of them away from Hillsborough) with three road wins over Seaforth, East Chapel Hill and Falls Lake. Orange defeated the Wildcats on Wednesday night 3-0 on scores of 25-17, 25-12 and 25-15. Senior Ella Wimsatt finished with 14 kills and 16 digs. Wimsatt emerged from Wednesday night with 101 kills on the young season, a team-high. Sophomore Aubrey Jordan finished with 12 kills and four digs.
Sophomore Katie Silcott, who has taken over setting duties after the graduation of Caitlin Carden, finished with 33 assists and nine digs. Senior libero Sadye Porter, who missed last season, led the Lady Panthers with 19 digs.
“Sadye’s presence is definitely seen out there,” Heverly said. “She covers a lot of court for such a little girl.”
Only the third set was competitive with East springing out to a 7-3 lead. With Panther junior Abby Silinski serving, Orange erased its deficit with a 7-2 run. Wimsatt had three kills in the spurt, while Jordan added two more and Silinki dropped in an ace that landed on the backline. The Lady Panthers ran off seven straight points starting with a Wimsatt kill off an assist from Silcott. Mariah Poole had a block while Wimsatt delivered an ace to put the Panthers ahead 16-10.
“I was a little bit nervous tonight,” Heverly said. “The girls had played all weekend and didn’t get any time to rest. But the girls came out strong and I think they learned a lot from this weekend about coming together as a team. This week, I feel we’ve seen an improvement in team cohesiveness than last week, our first week.”
Overall, five different players had kills in the final set, including five from Wimsatt. Sophomore Ava Wilkerson finished with six for the game. Poole scored match point to earn Orange’s second sweep of the Wildcats this season.
“Our setters are doing a good job in spreading out the sets more to give the outside hitters an option,” Heverly said. “All of the hitters are stepping up, instead of just are outside hitters.”
Next Tuesday, the Lady Panthers will begin the CCC slate with an important road trip to Western Alamance, who is currently ranked higher in the RPI rankings than any other CCC team. The Warriors will be a wildcard in a league turned upside down by graduations and coaching departures.
The looming question as the conference slate begins for Orange is whether this is finally the time they can rise above everyone for their first conference title.