Draughn volleyball reaches NCHSAA 3A West final

The Draughn volleyball team is now just one victory from a state championship appearance this weekend.

The Lady Wildcats continued their deepest run all-time in the state playoffs on Saturday, Oct. 25, winning their NCHSAA 3A state playoff fourth-round match to reach the West Regional final.

No. 6 seed Draughn (23-5) topped No. 10 Union Academy in four sets, 26-24, 20-25, 25-23, 25-16.

Next up, Draughn visits No. 1 seed Pine Lake Prep (19-4) on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m., with the winner of that match advancing to the state championship.

This year's eight state title matches are being hosted by N.C. State's Reynolds Coliseum and Wake Forest's LJVM Coliseum on Friday and Saturday. Sites and start times for title matches in each class are expected to be announced by the NCHSAA on Wednesday.

“This is the farthest we’ve gotten, obviously, my four years and beyond,” said the Lady Wildcats’ Peyton Brewer, one of the team’s six seniors who supplied seven digs and two aces in the latest victory and who has strong family ties in the sport locally.

Brewer’s aunt, Leah Lail, played on the 2001 Freedom team, the last Burke County team to reach a West Regional final in volleyball. That feat came two years after the Lady Patriots were the only state title volleyball team in county history, and Brewer’s grandmother, Debbie Kendall, was an FHS assistant coach during that era.

“The fact that I get to carry on the legacy is amazing,” Brewer added. “It’s great to be part of it, and the community we’ve had come out to support us has been amazing. I’m so excited. I think we can go all the way.”

Draughn head coach Triniti Lambert – who has been talking about winning a state title since she took the job about 16 months ago – said it “took grit and perseverance” to earn Saturday’s win and approach the precipice of county volleyball immortality.

“That’s something we have worked on all season, having that mental toughness and just being able to power through,” Lambert said. “We had a couple moments where we weren’t playing with our energy of focusing on our side of the court, and we talked about that and we fixed it.”

Draughn surged to an 8-2 first-set lead after senior Bailey Mozeley’s first kill of the evening, prompting a Union timeout. The Lady Wildcats never trailed in the set and led 3-1 early in the second before an ensuing 9-0 Union run changed the complexion as the guests evened the match.

Draughn flirted with squandering another early lead in the third set, up 6-0 on a Bella Whitson block before later trailing, 13-10. But the Lady Wildcats rattled off four straight points, capped by a Kylie Corpening kill, and never trailed again en route to a 2-1 edge.

The fourth set featured 11 ties and three lead changes, with Draughn taking control for good as back-to-back Mozeley kills made it 14-13 and jumpstarted an 11-1 scoring run.

Draughn had advanced to play Saturday after a wild reverse sweep of No. 3 seed host East Surry in the third round on Thursday, Oct. 23.

After dropping the first two sets, 17-25 and 22-25, Draughn claimed three straight by scores of 25-12, 25-20, and 16-14.

The Lady Wildcats in that win were led statistically by Mozeley (30 digs, 12 kills), Ashlyn Heavner (23 assists), Lillian Collins (12 kills), Macy Auton (five aces), and by Corpening, Whitson, and senior Ava Aldridge (three blocks each).

“Against East Surry, we were the team that was down and made that comeback and they weren’t able to reverse that momentum,” Lambert said. “We knew we didn’t want to give (Union) any momentum and risk doing that. We took a second and talked about it. We knew we had to stay on the service line, stay in control, and the main part was doing that together. Once all six people on the court were one being again, we started moving and flowing and playing our game.

“Union is a talented team, they’re good at finding where you are not and hitting it there. They’re smart and aggressive. I thought our girls did a really good job making adjustments to what they were doing.”

Mozeley (13 digs, team-high 12 kills) and fellow junior Shelby Proffitt (24 assists, 10 digs) both notched their third straight double-double effort in the state playoffs on Saturday, while other DHS contributors included Auton (20 digs, three aces, two assists), Heavner (15 assists, two kills), Aldridge (nine kills, seven digs), Whitson (seven kills, five blocks), Corpening (six kills, three blocks), Collins (four kills), and senior Ella Anthony (six kills).

NCSSM pair wins 1A state doubles title

It was an all-NCSSM-Morganton affair in the doubles title match of the NCHSAA 1A individual state championships at Cary Tennis Park on Saturday, Oct. 25.

In the end, West Regional champions Riya Reddy and Leah Gibson remained undefeated in doubles play for the season by topping Lady Dragons teammates Gina Byon and Kirsten Boyd, 6-1, 6-4, to claim both the school’s first state title of any kind and Burke County’s first tennis state title of any kind.

Reddy, a senior, and Gibson, a junior, did not drop a set in the two-day event that got underway last Friday. They defeated Vance Charter’s Rowen Hall/Nilay Akyar in the quarterfinals, 6-0, 6-1, and easily disposed of North Stokes’ Reagan Dixon/Lexi McBride 6-4, 6-2, in the semis.

The senior duo Byon/Boyd reached the final with wins over Laura Smith/Natalie Hollis of Bear Grass Charter (6-1, 6-1) and Mak Allen/Maggie Moody of Chatham Charter (4-6, 6-3, 6-0).

NCSSM-M junior Anjana Ramanujam was state runner-up in singles, winning 6-0, 6-0 and 6-1, 6-2 in her first two matches before falling in the title match to Abby Crawford of Thomas Jefferson, 1-6, 0-6.

Dragons junior Shrika Chatta also won in the singles quarters (6-0, 6-4) before being ousted by Crawford in the semis.

West No. 1 seed NCSSM-Morganton (10-0) concludes the season as it plays East No. 2 Bear Grass Charter (10-10) for the 1A dual-team state title on Saturday at noon at the Burlington Tennis Center.

Lady Dragons win cross country regional

Two-time conference individual champion Stella Friedman was one of two Burke County winners at the NCHSAA West Regional cross country championship meets on Saturday, Oct. 25, at the Tryon International Equestrian Center in Mill Spring.

Friedman (19:50.8), a senior, won by nearly 48 seconds in the 1A girls race, leading her Lady Dragons to their first-ever regional team title in the sport and the only one won by a county squad this fall.

Other runners on the NCSSM-Morganton girls regional title squad included top-10 individual finishers Amelia Fleury (third), Alexandra Hexemer (fifth), Nicole Taylor (sixth), and Gracie Toplitz (10th), plus Lilah Johnson and Lia Gracia.

Meanwhile, sophomore Elisabeth Sawdy of Patton (18:56.5) won the 3A individual regional title and helped lead her Lady Panthers to a runner-up team finish as they joined the Dragons in qualifying for state.

Sawdy will be accompanied at state by teammates Layla McGuire (fifth), Nora Wykle (12th), Julia Niehoff (15th), Anna Aiken, Payton Hunt, and Evelyn McGuire.

Also qualifying for state as a team were the third-place NCSSM-M boys and sixth-place East Burke girls in the 4A classification.

Max Vaughan (17:12.0; fifth) led the Dragons’ effort, and teammates Will Evans (11th), Brayden Tody (18th), Aiden Marshall (20th), and Alexander Hruby (21st) also had strong showings. NCSSM’s Josh Gandy and Henry Omstede will also run at state.

The Lady Cavs were paced by Lacie Forino (31st), who will be joined by Gracie Kaylor, Aubrey Sanders, Gracie Smith, Maliena Smith, Genevieve Wilson, and Kalie Young at state.

Four other county runners qualified for state individually this past weekend: East Burke’s Elijah Baker (sixth), Draughn’s Adelei Morrow (11th) and Noah Thomas (16th), and Freedom’s Frank Harrelson (34th).

The state championship meets are this weekend (Friday, Oct. 31 and Saturday, Nov. 1) at Ivey Redmon Sports Complex in Kernersville. The first day features the 1A boys (9 a.m.), 3A boys (9:40 a.m.), 1A girls (10:20 a.m.), 3A girls (11 a.m.), 4A boys (2:25 p.m.), and 4A girls (3:45 p.m.), while the 6A boys run in the afternoon on day two (2 p.m.).