WAXHAW – Volleyball is one of the few sports in which Rowan County hasn’t made a statewide impact, but Carson is changing that.
The Cougars won 18-25, 25-21, 25-23 and 25-23 on the road at Marvin Ridge in the fourth round of the 3A playoffs on Saturday.
“I really thought we were lucky because we didn’t play well,” Carson coach Kelan Rogers said. “We made a lot of mistakes.”
Rogers, who took West Davidson teams to state finals before coming to Carson, stayed calm after the Cougars dropped the first set.
“We played tired and our passing was really off and we gave them a lot of points with our mistakes,” Carson middle blocker Madison Weast said. “But Coach was very supportive after the bad start. He never got down on us, and we got it back together.”
Carson had big runs in each of the last three sets, although it was never easy against the Mavericks.
“We came back at them after that first set and we were able to put a lot of pressure on them,” Rogers said. “But we always let them stay in it. They were hard to put away, even when we got to set points.”
Weast praised the work of libero Laura Vaughn.
“She was passing really well, and all of were killing the ball,” Weast said. “We didn’t play as well as we could have, but we still pulled it out.”
It was just the third loss of the season for Marvin Ridge, which won 3-2 at North Iredell on Thursday.
Carson has been strong and has won at least 23 games in each of the last four seasons, but it had not made it past the second round of the playoffs until its current run. The Cougars cleared that second-round hurdle by winning at Hickory Ridge on Tuesday and they won at frequent nemesis Charlotte Catholic on Thursday.
The Cougars are constantly on the road because they were the No. 2 seed in the NPC and they’re playing conference champs. North Iredell won the NPC.
Next for the Cougars is the Western Regional final against the Enka Sugar Jets (25-1), who beat West Henderson 3-1 on Saturday.
That match will be played deep in the mountains, 150 miles from China Grove, in the town of Candler. It will be played Tuesday night.
“We’ll probably get home at 2 in the morning,” Rogers said. “But it’ll be fun for the girls. This is why you do it and why you put in all those hours of practice – to have a chance to play in games like this.”
The state championship match will be at Raleigh’s Reynolds Coliseum next Saturday.