Lexington Catholic avenges district volleyball loss with region win over Dunbar
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- Lexington Catholic avenged district loss, defeated Dunbar 3-2 to win region.
- Seniors Ella Blackburn and Payton Avilez anchored offense, Blackburn closed final set.
- Lexington Catholic advances to state tourney, will host Scott in first-round match.
A week ago, Lexington Catholic volleyball had Paul Laurence Dunbar on the ropes. The Knights needed one point for a two sets to one lead in the 43rd District final.
But in the wildest swing of momentum anyone involved had ever seen, the Bulldogs fought off 11 set points from down 24-15 to win that set 29-27 and roll on to the district title.
Thursday in Frankfort’s F.D. Wilkinson Gym, Lexington Catholic experienced another huge Dunbar rally in the rematch, this time with the 11th Region championship and a ticket to the state tournament on the line.
Dunbar leveled the match at two sets apiece with an emphatic 25-13 fourth-set win.
However, the Knights learned their lesson: Momentum can be taken back.
“I told them yesterday that we’ve got a story to write,” Lexington Catholic coach Jeff Kaufmann said. “You don’t have to worry about the past chapters. What happened last week is a chapter we’re done reading. We get to write the next chapter. And so how’s it going to look? What’s going to be on those pages? And we took that spirit and took that confidence even after that fourth set. I said. ‘Hey, the white page is before us. Let’s go write it.’”
Lexington Catholic got its revenge in the sequel.
Senior hitter Ella Blackburn began the fifth set with a kill from the back row on her serve and then dealt an ace for a 2-0 lead. The Knights’ advantage quickly grew to 14-5, a point away from the championship with the same margin they held in that fateful third set last Thursday.
Blackburn timed a Dunbar overpass at the net and swung her right arm into a kill to the back line that closed out the five-set match for the Knights’ second straight region crown by a score of 3-2 (24-26, 25-14, 25-23, 13-25, 15-5).
“We watched a lot of film and really cracked down on the basics of just blocking and passing. … Coming back from last week, we did not want to feel that way again,” Blackburn said. “I think that’s what drove us and our performance today.”
While Blackburn got the big moments to start and end the final frame, fellow senior outside hitter Payton Avilez made her presence felt, too, and earned the tournament’s most valuable player honor. After losing the first set, the Knights took control early in the second with a string of points on Avilez’s serve. Avilez closed out both the second and third sets with kills and had two more in the fifth-set breakaway.
“They’re a great team. They’re an amazing team, but we knew what we had to do,” Avilez said. “It’s our senior year, and we wanted to go all out, but we couldn’t do it without our whole team. Everyone stepped it up.”
Kaufmann noted Blackburn and Avilez are the only Knights hitting tandem to record more than 400 kills each in a season.
“To have these two anchor us all year long and produce in big situations is huge,” Kaufmann said. “These two are incredible volleyball players and incredible young women.”
It was not a typical regular season for Dunbar (22-18). A contender for the 11th Region title year-in and year-out, this year’s Bulldogs entered the postseason with a 17-17 record and had tumbled out of the statewide coaches poll top 25 in mid-September.
However, those setbacks helped build a team that crushed the postseason until Thursday. Dunbar swept No. 24 Great Crossing in the semifinals.
“This is one of the most fun teams I’ve probably coached — the most underdog and not-respected team that should have been given a ton of respect,” said Dunbar coach Jenni Morgan, whose team got swept by the Knights in last season’s region final. “We went into the district pretty much around .500, but playing top 10 teams. It’s all about preparation for what they did here. They’ve got nothing to hang their heads about. They came out and battled … and I couldn’t be more proud of them.”
Next, No. 10 Lexington Catholic (31-4) will host Scott, the 10th Region champion, in Monday’s first round of the state volleyball tournament. The rest of the tournament will be held next Friday and Saturday at George Rogers Clark in Winchester.
All-11th Region Tournament Team
Ella Blackburn, Maddy Warner, Charlotte Hall and Payton Avilez (MVP) Lexington Catholic; Peyton Beatty, Mia Pendley, Sadie Stuart, Dunbar; Olivia Orr and Ava Simonsen, Frederick Douglass; Erin Thomas and Jenna Browning, Great Crossing; Brooke Barntsen, Sayre; Lauren Parker, Franklin County; Addie Neal, Madison Central; Lilly Kirk, Madison Southern.
