Kerry Dillon

One of my favorite memories at Carroll was when the volleyball team had our PCL championship during my junior year against O’Hara. We really didn’t come out ready to play, we were not ourselves. We didn’t play like we were on the Carroll volleyball team. I’m not sure if it was because we had the mentality of “We beat them before, we have this in the bag,” or if it was just an off day, or if it was because we got there early and had too much time to spare. You
would think that having a lot of time would be a good thing, but I guess for our team it threw us off.

When we started our game, we were sluggish. You could even say we were lackadaisical. As some spectators described it, it was “not the Carroll volleyball team in the beginning.” We did not communicate, we were not swinging all the way through the ball, which caused it to go out, and we just all around were not in the right mindset.

Two sets out of three went by. The score was somewhere close to 22-18 O’Hara. The crowd thought this was going to be the end of our season. We still were not doing well, but it was better than the beginning. O’Hara had been so close to winning their first PCL championship title against us in four years. They got cocky and excited. They felt like the title was as good as theirs, but, boy, were they wrong. O’Hara had six chances to win, and they blew all of them. They became so full of themselves that they fell apart! Mid 3rd set, O’Hara overpassed the ball in just the right spot. I thought, “This is my chance.” I jumped for the ball and hit it right back down. Nobody could touch it, and the Carroll crowd lost their minds! Everyone perked up, and we turned the championship around on O’Hara. We ended up taking the 3rd, 4th, and 5th set, defeating O’Hara and taking the fourth championship title against them!

The turnout of the crowd was incredible. Everyone rushed the team after we won. Parents, students, and even Coach Brian rushed the court! Flash forward to May, Coach Brian and I say it was the best game of high school volleyball ever played.

This PCL Championship game inspired me to play college volleyball and will be a memory I will never forget.