Kelsey O’Hara

Class of 2021 senior goodbye

Kelsey+OHara

One of my favorite memories from my time at Carroll is when we won the PCL my junior year. The volleyball team had won the PCL a few times before this day, which made me feel the pressure even more. I was also playing as a libero, which was a new position for me. The year prior, I sustained an ankle injury, which made it hard to jump so I couldn’t be a hitter like I normally was. The job of the libero is to play defense, which doesn’t involve much jumping. I had been playing that position for the whole school season and was getting more used to it, but many liberos had been practicing that position for years. These factors made me even more nervous for the game. 

The time finally came and we arrived at the gym. I played in the PCL the year prior, but for some reason the gym looked so much bigger that year. We were playing Cardinal O’Hara, who we lost to when we played them during the regular season. When the game started, our team wasn’t doing good. We were missing serves (me included), not going for balls, and we had no communication. We ended up losing the first set and it wasn’t that close. I could feel the energy completely change from being excited to win to being nervous that we would lose. We played the second set and ended up losing that too. This meant that O’Hara could win the next set and win the PCL, or we could step up and take the game to five sets.

We ended up winning the third and fourth set, which meant that whoever won the fifth set one the whole game. The last set was so close the whole time and it looked like it could be anyone’s game. We ended up winning 31-29. Usually, the fifth set only goes to 15 points, but we just kept going back and forth each point and you need to win the game by two points. When we finally won, we were all so happy and relieved. After the game, we went out to a team dinner to celebrate the win.

This game was one of my favorite games in my high school career and I will never forget it.