Highland finishes historic season as state runner-up

FAIRBORN – The Highland Scots made history in 2019. They just came up one game short of the ultimate prize.

The Scots fell to top-ranked Middletown Bishop Fenwick on Saturday in the Div. II state championship, 3-1. Highland won the first set before dropping the next three by a combined eight points. It was Highland’s first state title game appearance, having knocked off defending champion Parma Heights Holy Name in the semifinals on Thursday.

“I thought we fought awful hard,” Highland coach Rob Terrill said. “I thought it would have been easy to mail it in at the end of that fourth set. I’m just so proud of the girls, that we continued to fight and fight and fight.”

The Scots were led by senior Raina Terry, who tallied a game-high 26 kills. The University of Illinois commit also recorded a team-high 12 digs and one block. Kendall Stover and Makenna Belcher both finished with 7 kills for the Scots, and setter Ashlynn Belcher led the team with 40 assists.

Fenwick claimed its second state title on Saturday, having won its first in 2010. The Falcons were paced offensively by two seniors – Julia Gardon and Elizabeth Hoerlein – who tallied 18 and 15 kills, respectively. Libero Bella DeSalvo recorded a game-high 16 digs and setter Grace Maziar issued a whopping 51 assists.

Highland and Fenwick traded points the entire first set, with the Scots playing catch-up most of the way. Highland went up 21-20 on a block from Terry, then a kill from Stover gave the Scots their first two-point lead of the game. Highland won the set, 25-22, on an ace from Terry that bounced errantly off the wrist of DeSalvo.

“Our gameplan was to kind of get them a little off-kilter,” Terrill said. “I think they’re a very, very disciplined team when everything’s textbook, so we tried to do some things to move them around a little bit, try and stretch their defense a little bit. So I thought we were doing that early on.”

Highland went into Saturday’s game intent on feeding Terry the rock, and she took advantage in the first set. The senior terrorized Fenwick’s defense with 9 kills. But the Falcons adjusted, and the second set was a different story.

Highland took two three-point leads in the second set, but saw both vanish at the hands of the resilient Falcons. Highland led 5-2 after a Terry ace, but Fenwick roared back to take a 6-5 lead on a spike from Emma Schaefer. The Scots held a 16-13 advantage later on, only to see Fenwick rattle off four straight points to retake the lead. Fenwick scored five of the set’s final eight points to win it, 25-22.

Fenwick’s back line began picking up previously untouched spikes from Terry & Co. during the second set, and the Falcons turned those opportunities into points. Fenwick coach Tyler Conley said he was proud of the way his team challenged Terry, a three-time first-team all-Ohioan who recorded over 1,500 kills in her high school career.

“They did a great job of adjusting and getting touches. Because we knew she was gonna get some, but we didn’t want to give her anything easy,” Conley said of Terry. “I don’t think she had an easy kill all night. She had to work real hard for those.”

Still, Highland found itself in an ideal spot late in the third set. With the game tied 1-1, the Scots held a 22-18 lead. But once again, Fenwick mounted a comeback. Five different Falcons scored during the team’s 7-1 run that would result in a 25-23 third-set victory.

“I think it just starts with one play…” Fenwick setter Grace Maziar said. “We’re like, ‘OK, we gotta get this one point, we’ll make our run, we’ll gain back momentum and then we’ll go from there.'”

Maziar was simply brilliant on Saturday, as the 5-foot-3 distributor added five kills to her 51-assist total. Maziar broke the state’s career assist record during the game’s final set, finishing her high school tenure with 4,003 total.

“She’s the only setter in the state of Ohio to have over 4,000 career assists, and I don’t know that that record’s ever going to be broken. She’s always going to be standing at the top,” Conley said. “She’s been my captain for four years, she’s been my setter for four years, and in big moments, we trust her and she goes and makes the plays for us. She’s not 5-foot-3 in her heart, she’s a lot bigger than that.”

Maziar said surpassing the 4,000-assist mark was “in the back of my mind” as a personal goal, but what her team accomplished on Saturday was much greater.

“It was nowhere near what my main goal was, and that was looking around at these teammates and knowing that we wanted to go all the way,” the senior said. “The payout on that is so much bigger to me.”

In what was largely a back-and-forth affair all afternoon, Fenwick was able to gain some distance in the fourth set. The Falcons found the seam in the Highland defense – the middle of the court – and used it to their advantage.

“That was something we knew we were going to have to take advantage of, because we knew we weren’t going to be able to go after [Terry]. She’s too good of a blocker,” Conley said. “So we stayed away from her, and the middles took advantage and did a great job. [Maziar] did a great job of running the offense through them.”

The Falcons stretched their lead to 18-10 on a block from Hoerlein, but Highland rallied back, cutting the deficit to 22-19 on a vicious Terry spike. Fenwick maintained the lead, however, and emerged victorious on a kill from sophomore Kate Hafer, which split the Highland defense and left the Scots stunned.

Fenwick won the final set, 25-22, and the game, 3-1.

Terrill said his team switched its defense midway through the final set, in an effort to cover the middle of the court. By the time the Scots regained traction, however, it was too little, too late.

“We changed defenses halfway through that fourth set and then we didn’t commit to it for a little bit. We just weren’t committing to it, we weren’t trusting ourselves, and by the time we finally did, now we’re down eight or nine points or whatever it was,” Terrill said. “We just didn’t get that commitment on that adjustment right away, that was the main thing that slowed us down in that fourth set.”

Terrill credited Fenwick for its serve-receive defense, which he said was nearly flawless on Saturday.

“We kept trying to move the ball around a little bit on them there, and their first contact was better than our first contact. That’s all there was to it,” Terrill said. “That just made a huge difference right there.”

Fenwick (29-1) captured the state title Saturday after falling two games short in 2018. The Falcons lost in the state semifinals last year, 3-1. They lost just one game this season, 3-2 to Cincinnati Seton on Aug. 26.

“It feels amazing. I mean, some of us have played together since we were like 11,” Schaefer said. “The moment we all knew we were going to Fenwick, we were like, ‘We’re going to do it our senior year. It’s gonna come our senior year.’ And for that to actually happen, it’s just insane. It feels so amazing, and it’s gonna feel amazing for a long, long time.”

Despite the loss, Terrill said afterwards that he was proud of his team. Highland (25-5) made history this season. The Scots won their first district championship at the Div. II level. They made it to state for the second time in program history, and advanced to the state title game for the first time. They won their seventh straight league championship, and they lost just five games all season – four to top-tier Div. I teams, and one to the best Div. II team in Ohio.

“We made it to the finals and we played our hearts out all the way through,” Terrill said. “I told them, nothing to be sad about except that it’s the last game. That’s it.”

Highland’s senior class, which includes Terry, Gena West, Lillee Keltner, Darcie Walters and Savanna Whisman, will graduate without a conference loss. The group qualified for state twice, bringing a state runner-up trophy back to Sparta this year.

Both Terry and West said they were proud of how far the team had come. They believed in each other, West said, they just came up short on Saturday.

“It would have been great to take off my jersey for the last time with a win, but like coach said earlier, we have no regrets out there,” Terry said. “It was a great run and I’m proud of us.”

“We all knew coming in here, as seniors, that this was going to be a hard game, knowing that this is the last time we’ll play together,” West added. “We’ve played together since we were 7, so coming this far with each other was an amazing feeling.”