Warriors end run in semis

By Jeremy Stafford -- jstafford@nvdaily.com

CROZET -- Their embrace lasted forever.

Or at least, Taylor Henshaw and Lauren Wilkins hoped it might. But as they clung to each other outside the Western Albemarle gym, a 3-1 (25-17, 19-25, 25-17, 25-14) loss fresh in their minds, both girls knew they had to let go. They had to let go of each other, let go of the unsettling loss, and let go of a magnificent season which saw an undersized Sherando team dance all the way to the Region II semifinals.

But once they let go, what came next? Where else was there to go?

As Wilkins walked away, Henshaw stood in a sort of limbo: To walk outside would put a final punctuation on a season she couldn't bear to see end. But to stay, and to watch the Western Albemarle girls celebrate their state tournament berth, might be just as maddening.

And so, for the second time Thursday night, Henshaw had to let go.

"It will get easier just because we weren't expected to get anywhere close to here," she said of her team playing in the semifinals. "We weren't expected to win [against Broad Run] and we proved a lot of people wrong. We weren't expected even to come in first in the district.

"It's just phenomenal how a bunch of girls can come together and make anything happen."

But for perhaps the first time this season, Sherando faced a team with as much fire, and as much passion, as they had. And with every monstrous kill from Western Albemarle hitter Sarah Harper, with every ace scored by Elizabeth Via, a bit of that Sherando passion seemed to evaporate high into the gym's scaffolding.

"It's a credit to Western Albemarle, they just took every bit of energy we seemed to have," Sherando coach Chuck Ashby said. "We just couldn't slow [them] down."

Make no mistake, though, Sherando fought tooth and nail to retain that energy. After every timeout, Wilkins bellowed a yell of pure emotion, after every kill, Megan Sirbaugh's fists danced a ballet through the air. Anything to keep that candle burning bright, anything to keep that Cinderella story from ending.

And in the second set, it seemed the night might fall Sherando's way. Morgan Sirbaugh rattled off four straight service points, and Brooke Schneider spiked a frightening kill to give Sherando a 9-8 lead. Only after two Sherando errors did Western Albemarle take the lead back.

But five kills by Morgan Sirbaugh, in only seven plays, helped bring Sherando to within 18-16 of Western Albemarle. Ashleigh Tanis' line-drive serves helped score 6 straight Sherando points before Wilkins, from deep in the back row, whistled a kill into the heart of the Western Albemarle defense. A Western Albemarle error gave Sherando the set.

"Western is a great team -- great offensively -- and they're very explosive," Tanis said. "We just tried to match it, and we did at one point."

Suddenly there was hope for Sherando. Hope that if kept on its heels, Western Albemarle wouldn't be able to handle those Morgan Sirbaugh kills, or those Tanis serves. But they did handle it, and Sherando dropped the next two sets to the very same team which knocked them out of the regional tournament a year ago.

"Our goal tonight was just to come out and play our hardest, and we did that, and it was amazing to take one game from them," senior libero Brooklyn Wilson said, feigning a slight smile and fighting back the very tears that had flowed relentlessly only moments before. "Obviously we would have liked to take three, but I think that one game just showed us that we do have the ability to play with the best."

Wilson took the brunt of the Western Albemarle attack, which registered an astounding 43 kills. Harper had 16 kills, and Ana Asher scored six.

Sherando had 31 kills, 14 coming from Morgan Sirbaugh, seven from Megan Sirbaugh and five from Wilkins. Sherando had seven blocks.

And as Henshaw let go of the loss, a smile finally lining her face, she let out a short but genuine laugh before she took off into the night. It ended her all-district season, it ended her high school career, but she was OK with that.

"This is a great team, and I've been on great teams all four years, and this was definitely one of the best," she said. "We've had our ups and downs, and we fight a lot sometimes on the court, but at the end of the day, after we step off the court ... we're still all friends.

"I've never been on a team where I've been friends with every single person. It sucks that we couldn't have gone further -- because if anything, I would have wanted to share that with these people -- but everything happens for a reason."