No. 4 Dunbar volleyball defeats unbeaten Great Crossing. Two more top-five foes lie ahead.
Two of Kentucky’s top five high school volleyball teams squared off at Great Crossing High School on Wednesday night.
The fight that No. 4 Paul Laurence Dunbar expected from the undefeated and fifth-ranked Warhawks took time to arrive but, when it did, the Bulldogs were at their best.
Paul Laurence Dunbar easily won the opening set 25-16, then fought from behind for much of the second set before clawing its way to a 26-24 win. However, Great Crossing had found its stride, and the Warhawks took advantage by routing the Bulldogs 25-19 in the third set to force a fourth.
“It’s what you see in volleyball,” Dunbar head coach Jenni Morgan said. “When you’re up 2-0, the team that’s always up kind of gets lax, and the team that’s down knows that they’ve got to do everything they can. And that’s what happened, we kind of just sat back and weren’t on our A-game. They played phenomenal and took it to us, and we had to respond.”
Great Crossing’s momentum continued, as the Warhawks built an 8-5 lead in the fourth set. Their fans were raucous, celebrating every point over last year’s KHSAA state runner-up as Morgan shouted to her starters, “Come on, you’ve got to make things happen, let’s go!”
And make things happen, the Bulldogs most certainly did.
Dunbar went on a six-point swing, earning a lead it would not again lose, fueled by two aces from Peyton Beatty. She was all smiles after delivering the Bulldogs’ 10th point of the game with an unreturnable serve as the gallery of Dunbar students chanted, “She’s-a-freshman!”
Dunbar went on to win the match 3-1 with a 25-20 fourth-set victory thanks to strong performances from Division I-bound seniors Delaney Gash (University of Akron) and Mia Telechbush (University of Illinois Chicago) and star junior and Indiana University commit Bela Haggard.
Great Crossing lost for the first time in 21 matches this season.
“We’re a really young team,” Gash said. “We only have three seniors. So, kind of focusing in and then coming back is a really mature thing to do. And I think that I’m really proud of how we stepped that up and did that.”
Both Gash and Telechbush believe that locking in to take back momentum and overcoming mistakes together are part of the team’s culture.
“We just have to play Dunbar volleyball,” Telechbush said. “And we know we weren’t playing that in that third set. And we know in the first and second ones we had good energy and we were really making plays, and we kind of lost that third set. ... That fourth set we just knew, new set, 0-0. And we just had to come out and work together and play hard.”
After Wednesday’s win over Great Crossing, Dunbar was 24-5 overall and 7-0 in 11th Region play heading into a Thursday night match at Tates Creek.
Dunbar’s early October schedule includes a pair of matches that offer the Bulldogs an early look at what could be ahead in the postseason. Dunbar hosts third-ranked Sacred Heart (17-7) on Oct. 3 and No. 1 Assumption (20-3) on Oct. 10.
Morgan has already ensured the Bulldogs understand what it feels like to face the best.
Dunbar’s five defeats this season have all come at the hands of powerful opponents based outside of Kentucky, as the team has traveled to — as well as hosted — stiff competition from around the country.
“(They’re) mentally tougher,” Morgan said of the chief benefit her players received. “Even though we have some returning players, we have a lot of players that don’t have much varsity experience that are playing big roles for us this year. And those players learned to step up real quick. And they learned how to play as a team, and even though you may have your couple guns and your go-to players, everybody’s got a role. And learning that role, accepting their role, they’ve done a really good job with that.”
While the regular season has brought a lot of success, the Bulldogs’ focus remains the same: Continue working as a unit, one match at a time, until the fight is done.
“It’s everyone,” Telechbush said. “We need all six people on the court, everyone on the bench. The people on the bench help everyone who plays on the court get better. It really takes the whole program.”
Kentucky high school volleyball rankings
The top 25 teams in the state according to this week’s Kentucky Volleyball Coaches Association poll (first-place votes in parentheses):
1. Assumption (18)
2. Notre Dame (3)
3. Sacred Heart (1)
4. Paul Laurence Dunbar
5. Great Crossing (2)
6. St. Henry
7. Central Hardin
8. North Oldham
9. Manual
10. Mercy
11. Ryle
12. Bowling Green (1)
13. West Jessamine
14. McCracken County
15. Elizabethtown
16. Lexington Catholic
17. Simon Kenton
18. Frederick Douglass
19. Greenwood
20. Conner
21. Nelson County
22. Taylor County
23. Franklin County (2)
24. Covington Holy Cross
25. South Oldham
This story was originally published September 28, 2023 at 12:29 PM.
