Sports
Winter Haven beach volleyball halts season as state final four team
TALLAHASSEE — Even after two lightening delays that forced the FHSAA to postpone Winter Haven beach volleyball’s final four state tournament matchup to after 10 p.m., the Blue Devils still started the competition strong.
In a shotgun format — a format to conserve time in which all five seeds had to play at the same time as opposed to the No. 2 and No. 4 seeds going first — No. 17 Winter Haven (19-1) went down 3-2 against No. 15 Fletcher High School (21-3) Friday night at Florida State University.
“The uncontrollable of the weather stinks. We wish we weren’t having to deal with that situation. We would have really loved the chance to play a match at 6 p.m. instead of after 10 p.m. and also play a match where we have a two-pairing start and then three pairings play instead of having all five pairings going out at the same time. But that’s not how it worked itself out this time. No excuses. (We) just kind of have to live with the results,” Winter Haven head volleyball coach Dylan Sechrest said.
The No. 2 line comprised of Sophia Whitaker and Kindyl Goff and the No. 4 line of Camila DeJesus and Leah Robles both won 2-0.
One loss was from the No. 1 line in The Ledger’s Player of the Year Rylee Tanner and Kylie Catrett.
Still, Winter Haven was up overall 2-1 early on. With the Blue Devils No. 3 line Emily Drier and Addison Traina set to compete, this pairing won the first set but would go on to fall short in the final two sets.
And then the No. 5 line of Morgan Giles and Sadie McIntee lost the first set, eventually winning the second set but losing the third set.
“We had a situation where the three line and the five line were playing the third set. If we would have won either of them, we would have won the match 3-2, and advance to tomorrow (Saturday). Unfortunately, we lost both of those third sets — kind of deciding games and lost the match 3-2,” Sechrest said.
The season is done, though this particular volleyball program is the first in school history to advance as far as the final four. But Sechrest said the team had incredible resilience.
“I’m incredibly proud of these girls. We showed some real fight today as a team. Even though the match didn’t go the way we wanted it to go as far as the result is concerned, I really just wanted these girls to work very hard and fight and battle this thing out and give us a chance to win, and they did that. … Only thing we can do now is be thankful for having such a great season that we did,” Sechrest said.