Cedar Ridge Volleyball

As freshmen in 2019, Cedar Ridge’s Cameron Lloyd, Julie Altieri and Cameron Lanier didn’t flinch when they faced Chapel Hill, the three-time defending Big 8 Champions, in the conference opener.

The Red Wolves won 3-2 in Hillsborough. Chapel Hill didn’t lose again. They claimed the 3A State Championship with a 27-1 record.

So why would the Red Wolves be intimidated on Thursday night?

A year wiser and more mature, Cedar Ridge throttled the Tigers 3-0 on scores of 25-23, 25-21 and 25-12 at Smith Middle School in Chapel Hill.

In front of a crowd limited to junior varsity players from both teams due to the pandemic, the Red Wolves dominated the defending 3A state champions to improve to 2-0 in the Big 8 Conference. Cedar Ridge started its season with a 3-0 win over Northwood on Tuesday night in Hillsborough.

It was the second win for new Cedar Ridge coach Fiona Cunningham, a former Chapel Hill assistant who faced her former team for the first time.

“It was a long of fun,” Cunningham said. “It’s always great to come out with a win. It was also fun to just feel that sense of volleyball community again. Players getting to see players again that they know. It brings a sense of normalcy.”

During a year where nothing has been normal, Cedar Ridge’s players have spent the year adjusting to a new routine. While most sports skidded to a halt around the world during the summer, the club volleyball season carried on, albeit to a lesser degree. Some of the Cedar Ridge players were teammates on the beach volleyball court, which allowed them to get used to playing with masks.

“I think we’ve all adapted to it pretty well,” said Altieri. “We’ve had a few struggles, but we’re working as a team to get through it and to get to know each other better.”

There’s no time for slack. Because of the pandemic, a regular season that ordinarily is 23-25 games has been riddled down to 14. It will be exclusively conference games for Cedar Ridge.

There also will be no wildcard in the playoffs. Only the top two teams for the Big 8 will see the postseason, which makes Cedar Ridge’s strong opening week all the more important.

After an 18-6 campaign in 2019 under former head coach Anna Seethaler that ended with an opening round playoff loss to Terry Sanford, the Red Wolves lost four seniors. Lloyd, Altieri and Lanier all played over 75 sets last season as freshmen.

On top of that, together they’ve now handed Chapel Hill its last two losses. The Tigers have gone 81-15 since 2017 with two regional championships and our Big 8 titles.

While it would be easy to attach a slogan like “a statement win” or “a changing of the guard” to Cedar Ridge sweeping the defending state champions, Cunningham has her own phrase.

A grain of salt.

“That’s how we’re taking it,” Cunningham said. “We know that Chapel Hill is a great team. But we also know that this year, more than any, will be anybody’s game when it comes to the playoffs. Teams are going to be rapidly changing this season.”

After Thursday night’s win, Cunningham received a congratulatory text from a Chapel Hill assistant about the Red Wolves’ performance. It’s a win over Chapel Hill in volleyball. Ordinarily, that would be something that speaks volumes.

For Cedar Ridge, it will—until Monday, at least. That’s when they host crosstown rival Orange, who defeated the Red Wolves at Cedar Ridge Gymnasium last year.

Cunningham will be new to the Hillsborough rivalry, but she knows what to expect. On Friday morning, she finished up practice with a word to her team about the first matchup with the Lady Panthers.

“We want to make sure that emotionally, it’s a stable game,” Cunningham said. “That’s what we’ve been talking about since the start of the season–not having big ups and downs. Coming off the Chapel Hill win, we don’t want our girls to start to get complacent.”

Orange will start its season on Friday night against East Chapel Hill inside Wildcats Gymnasium. The two teams split the season series in 2019.

Usually, November is around the time that volleyball season ends in North Carolina. But this is 2020, when nothing is normal. Thus, the Cedar Ridge volleyball team started its season on Thursday night in front of a audience comprised solely of junior varsity players, staff and one media member at Red Wolves Gymnasium. The Red Wolves won 3-0 over Northwood. However, sophomore Julie Altieri has been active during the pandemic. She has played beach volleyball with her club team. Altieri started as a freshman in 2019, when the Red Wolves went 18-6 and finished tied for 3rd in the Big 8 Conference with a 10-4 record. Altieri led the Red Wolves in assists on Tuesday night. The third member of her family to play sports at Cedar Ridge, Altieri will look to defeat defending 3A State Champion Chapel Hill on Thursday night at Smith Middle School. Last season, Altieri led the Red Wolves with 80 assists and also registered 178 digs, which was third on the team.

There was finally a sense of normalcy on Tuesday night in Hillsborough. The Cedar Ridge volleyball team became the first squad to return to action since the pandemic started in March. The Red Wolves started its 14-game regular season with a 3-0 win over Northwood. Senior libero Marlee Rakouskas started under new head coach Fiona Cunningham as the Red Wolves won on scores of 25-22, 25-14, 25-23. Rakouskas was named the player of the match. Despite the pandemic, Rakouskas has remained busy on the volleyball court this summer with her club team. Last season, Cedar Ridge finished 3rd in the Big 8 Conference and was the only team to defeat Chapel Hill, who went on to win the 3A State Championship. On Thursday night, Cedar Ridge will travel to face Chapel Hill. The match will be held at Smith Middle School, but fans won’t be permitted due to COVID-19 restrictions.

This week’s Cedar Ridge Red Wolf of the Week is softball center fielder Shili Quade. On Friday night, Quade had an inside the park grand slam as the Red Wolves outscored West Johnston 21-16 at Red Wolves Softball Field. Quade reached in all four off her at-bats against the Wildcats and scored three runs as Cedar Ridge improved to 2-0. Shili has been a member of two Big 8 Conference Championship teams in softball and has played on the varsity team since her freshman year. She has also played volleyball for the Red Wolves. Last fall, she helped the Red Wolves reach the playoffs for the first time since 2016. In the season opener against Cardinal Gibbons on Wednesday, Quade went 1-for-4 with a run scored as the Red Wolves won 11-7. Cedar Ridge will start Big 8 Conference play with a road trip to Northwood on Tuesday.

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.

The first thing to know is that it was ungodly hot inside Orange’s gymnasium.

The heat index on September 12 was 101 degrees. In retrospect, that shouldn’t be a surprise because it was an intense summer that lingered long afterwards to dispel any notion of a fall chill in the air for relief. Three weeks later, Cedar Ridge would face Chapel Hill on October 3–with highs of 100, nine degrees ahead of the previous record.

Even on a standard September day, the first Cedar Ridge-Orange game of the year would have felt like a pressure cooker. The respective student bodies from both schools would make sure of that.

The students walked into Orange’s gym fully understanding what was on the line. This was the biggest Orange-Cedar Ridge game in years, not just because of the cross-country rivalry.

These were two state playoff teams.

Cedar Ridge was 7-1, its best start in recorded history. This was also its third match in four days, having opened the week with a loss to Jordan in Durham. Cedar Ridge was already trying to surpass its win total from 2018, when they finished 7-15.

After Orange dropped its opening three matches, they rebounded with a six-game winning streak, including victories over Person, South Granville, and Vance County in its Big 8 Conference opener.

There was something extra on the line for Cedar Ridge. Orange had beaten them five straight times, dating back to 2016 when Jordan Lloyd led the Lady Panthers to a 3-1 win with eight kills and 25 digs.

The funny thing was the person most responsible for ending Cedar Ridge’s losing streak to Orange was Lloyd’s younger sister.

In Cedar Ridge’s 3-2 win over Orange, Cameron Lloyd had 18 kills, 12 digs and five assists. As was the case throughout the year, Cedar Ridge’s freshmen were paramount to victory. Lloyd’s classmate, Julie Altieri, had 28 assists, seven kills, eight assists, and nine digs.

Cedar Ridge won on scores of 25-23, 22-25, 25-23, 15-25 and 15-7.

In the fifth set, it was freshman Cameron Lloyd who fired the biggest shots, serving four consecutive aces as the Red Wolves bounced ahead 7-2. Lloyd had surpassed 100 kills for the season earlier in the week in the Jordan loss.

Altieri’s ace on match point led to a spirited celebration for the Red Wolves to culminate an exhausting evening for players and fans, alike.

The opening set had eight ties and four lead changes. The second set had 13 ties and four lead changes.

In the first frame, Cedar Ridge scored the final four points with Lloyd serving. She delivered an ace to tie the set 23-23. Senior Emma Downing gave Cedar Ridge the lead with an unassisted kill. The Red Wolves took the opening set when a service return by Orange went wide.

Orange evened the match in the second. A successful block by Erin Jordan-Cornell gave the Lady Panthers a 22-18 lead. Jordan-Cornell finished the set with five kills. Cedar Ridge lost junior setter Layne Foster in the 2nd set because of a left quadricep injury.

Orange appeared set to take the 3rd set, leading 20-15 after a kill by senior Emma Clements off an assist from Ella Van Time. Cedar Ridge finished the frame with a 10-3 run, which included Altieri serving up three straight aces. She also slammed home set point.

Orange sophomore Lottie Scully had 16 kills, 18 blocks, and 20 assists. Avery Miller finished with 13 kills, ten blocks, and 17 digs.

Featuring Marlee Rakouskas, Jaden Hurdle, Rachel Tilley and Ian Johnson.

In this edition of Thanksgiving wishes, we hear from Orange’s Cooper Porter, Grace Andrews and Taylor Montague, along with Cedar Ridge’s Anaya Carter.

In this edition, we ask Orange shortstop Joey Berini, Cedar Ridge volleyball setter ShiLi Quade, Cedar Ridge women’s basketball center Caitlyn Lloyd and Red Wolf soccer midfielder Eh Kaw Hso what they’re thankful for. Wait until the end for a thoughtful answer from one of the athletes.

Following her team’s most successful season since 2015, Cedar Ridge volleyball coach Anna Seethaler has been named the Big 8 Conference Coach of the Year.

In addition, Cedar Ridge junior Marlee Rakouskas and freshman Cameron Lloyd were named to the All-Big 8 Conference team this week.

Orange, who finished 16-8, had seniors Kaitlyn Werden and Brooke Fryar named to the All-Big 8 team.

Seethaler took a Cedar Ridge team that posted a 7-15 record in 2018 and led them to an 18-6 season, despite losing promising middle hitter Lydia Wood during the summer after she transferred. Cedar Ridge stormed out to a 6-0 start. After they suffered their first setback at Jordan on September 9, the Red Wolves stunned Chapel Hill the following night in Hillsborough. It was the Tigers’ first and only loss of the season.

Chapel Hill won the 3A State Championship over West Henderson in Raleigh two weeks ago.

As if that wasn’t enough, Cedar Ridge defeated Orange in five sets at Panther Gymnasium 48 hours later. It was the first time Cedar Ridge win at Orange since 2015.

“Ours was a team that showed up for each other. We worked as a unit, as a team, as a family,” Seethaler said after the season-ending loss to Gray’s Creek in the 3A State Playoffs. “Throughout the season the parents, grandparents, friends, administrators and players all showed up and worked together to make some really incredible things happen. There were challenges and upsets and annoyances, like any other family. But everyone just kept showing up through all of it.”

From the time the season unofficially started with a scrimmage at Burlington’s (non-air conditioned) Fairchild Community Center in early August, Seethaler was set to play three freshmen in her regular rotation. Indeed, Lloyd, Julie Altieri and Cameron Lanier started right away and immediately posted impressive numbers.

“For me, actions speak louder than words,” Seethaler said. “Even though I was hopeful and open gyms were looking good AND I kept hearing ‘we’d have a great team this year’, I didn’t really know what we were capable of until we actually competed throughout  the season. About half way through the season I looked back at where we came from, even from last year and thought ‘Well dang. We’ve won more games halfway through this season than we won the entire season last year, I’d say we are doing pretty good.’”

Lloyd was the only freshman in the Big 8 Conference who finished in the top five in kills, aces and digs. She registered 342 kills, 68 aces and 237 digs. On September 17 against Northern Durham, Lloyd had a triple-double with 17 kills, 12 aces and ten digs.

During Cedar Ridge’s team banquet last week, Lloyd was named the Team MVP.

Rakouskas, a junior libero, had 224 digs and 472 service receptions. She had a season-high 20 digs and 37 service receptions in a 3-2 win over Northwood on October 1.

The Orange volleyball team won more games than any other Lady Panther squad this decade. Fryar, who signed with Gardner-Webb last week, was a senior libero who led the team with 276 digs and 338 service receptions. She was third on the team with 52 assists.

“I owe (Orange) Coach (Kelly) Young a lot,” Fryar said. “She’s coached me since I was a freshman. Now I’m a senior. She just really helped out my game.”

Werden led Orange with 36 aces and 290 assists. She was second on the squad with 121 digs. In a victory over Northern Durham on September 26, Werden had 18 assists and 13 digs.

Cedar Ridge’s Altieri and Emma Downing were named honorable mention All-Big 8.

Orange sophomore Lottie Scully and senior Elizabeth Vosburg were also named honorable mention.