‘We’re just going to walk out with our heads up high.’ Henry Clay’s historic season ends.
After a disappointing end to a historic season, Henry Clay’s volleyball players circled around and sat down on the court following their state semifinals loss to Mercy at George Rogers Clark High School on Saturday morning.
Each took a moment to say what the season and their teammates meant to them.
Tears flowed.
Pride swelled.
“I can’t believe it’s all over,” Abby Shadwick, the Blue Devils’ first Ms. Volleyball honoree said after the last high school game of her career. “This team taught me how to play for them and just how to be selfless. I think that was our key that we just played for each other. No matter what, we’re just going to walk out with our heads up high.”
Henry Clay won back-to-back 11th Region titles, the eighth and ninth in program history.
The Blue Devils made the school’s sixth KHSAA State Volleyball Tournament semifinals appearance.
They beat one of Kentucky high school volleyball’s elite four private schools, Sacred Heart, for the first time.
They took not just one, but two sets against 22-time state champ and perennial No. 1 Assumption during a regular-season match this year, something no Henry Clay team had ever done.
Saturday, Henry Clay ran into a Mercy team that looked every bit of its preseason No. 1 ranking. With a first serve at 9 a.m., it took two dropped sets, each 25-15 losses, before the Blue Devils found their rhythm. They fended off three match points and got the game to a 25-25 tie before succumbing 27-25 in the final frame.
“We knew they were really, really good,” Henry Clay Coach Dale Grupe said of the Jaguars. “They were just on target. They put us on our heels. And I’m just proud of the way our girls, despite that, kept fighting. And we had a chance in the third set. Who knows what could have happened if we just got a lucky break there?”
Mercy earned its way into the semifinals by knocking off coaches’ poll No. 1 and back-to-back-to-back defending champion Assumption in a five-set match on Friday as the tournament’s quarterfinalists gathered in Winchester for the morning-to-night elite eight event. Henry Clay swept into the semis with a win over Greenwood, the only other public school team ever to reach a state championship game.
Notre Dame defeated West Jessamine 3-1 in Saturday’s other semifinal.
The Pandas and Jaguars, who had 15 state titles between them, met in Saturday’s finals with Notre Dame taking the title in five sets by scores of 21-25, 25-19, 25-22, 22-25, and 15-13. It is Notre Dame’s ninth state championship and first since 1994. Mercy has finished runner-up for four consecutive seasons.
While Grupe’s 2016 Blue Devils reached the state finals and won a set there against Sacred Heart, the coach has maintained that he feels this team, with nine seniors on a roster of 12, has been his most complete in his 26 years of coaching at Henry Clay and Woodford County.
“This is definitely the strongest class that we’ve ever had,” Grupe said “Not just strong in volleyball, but academically, community, everything. They are just a really special group and they are going to do awesome things in college regardless if they play in college or not. … They are going to do awesome things in life, as well.”
Abby Shadwick plans to continue her career at Colgate. Twin sister Emma Shadwick is headed to Yale. Paige Wagers has committed to Mercer and Ellery Gray will play for Villanova.
“This has been an insane bright spot in all of COVID and all of the crazy times this year,” Abby Shadwick said. “Our coach summed it up well. She said we’re not going to remember the ultimate outcome, but we are going to remember how we felt as a team. And that was a special thing. So, I’m thankful.”
This story was originally published November 7, 2020 at 4:31 PM.
