Calhoun girls volleyball will play for Class A state championship
Overhead by Calhoun's Julia Lawrence during Calhoun verses Burnt Hills during pool play at the New York State Public High School girl's Class A volleyball championships at Cool Insuring Arena in Glens Falls, New York on Nov. 19, 2022 Credit: Patrick E. McCarthy
GLENS FALLS, N.Y. — The “road to states’’ has been on the whiteboard in the Calhoun girls volleyball locker room since the first day of practice.
It may have seemed like a lofty goal for a team that made its first county championship appearance last year, but just as they’ve done all year, the Colts played with a chip on their shoulder trying to prove they belonged.
And after a dominating pool play performance on Saturday that earned them a berth in Sunday’s state Class A championship match, the last stop on the road to a title comes at noon against Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake at Cool Insuring Arena.
“Today couldn’t have gone any better,” senior Julia Lawrence said. “Once we won our first game, we really thought that we could do this today.”
That first game was two sets in pool play against Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake, the defending Class A state champion. Although the scores were close, with Calhoun winning 25-22 and 25-21, the Colts took control early in both and never trailed.
“We don’t get intimidated by anyone because we know how hard we worked for this,” senior Ella Maldonado said. “It might have been our first time here, but we like to be the underdog and to prove people wrong.”
Calhoun (14-5) also went 2-0 in pool play against Cornwall and split two sets with Irondequoit, the loss coming after the starters had been removed.
“We played a very tough regular season, which helped prepare us for the playoffs,” Maldonado said. “We went to five sets a lot during the regular season, so when the sets got closer today and we played a tough team, we didn’t fold and we knew we could rise to the occasion.”
It would be hard to look at the road to Glens Falls without the late-season losses to Wantagh and South Side, the two teams seeded ahead of Calhoun in the Nassau A tournament earlier this month.
“After we lost, it made us extra mad and really amped us up to play them again,” senior Victoria Zovich said. “We were excited to come back and show them who we really are.”
And after Saturday, the entire state knows all about Calhoun. The only question is if they have enough gas left in the tank to earn the crown of state champions.
“It’s kind of crazy we are here, but we’ve worked really hard,” Lawrence said. “We knew we could make it to counties, and once we were there, we kept focus on the next goal and knew that we wanted to come out on top.”
Gene Morris joined Newsday's sports department in September 2012 and covers high school sports. He earned a journalism degree from Stony Brook University in 2010.
