Hamilton Southeastern made some more history on Saturday, as the Royals’ volleyball team qualified for the state championship game.
Southeastern swept Crown Point 25-19, 25-21, 25-15 to win the Class 4A Frankfort semi-state. As a result, the Royals will play at state for the first time in program history, taking on New Castle next Saturday at Ball State’s Worthen Arena.
“In previous years, we’ve been very close,” said Royals coach Jason Young. He remembered the last time Southeastern got to semi-state – that was in 2015, when the Royals reached the final of what was then a four-team semi-state, but dropped a close match to Crown Point. Now, Southeastern is the team headed to state.
“It’s been beautiful to see this group come together,” said Young.
After winning a close first set, the Royals got down 5-1 in the second set, but eventually came back to win 25-20.
“I think the first 20 points of the match, everyone’s going to be a little tense,” said Young. “After that, it kind of evened out and then we just played our game. I think we served well, we passed well, and we took big swings.”
“It was an early lead that they had and we work on practice every day about coming back from those,” said the Royals’ Abby Weber. “I wasn’t too worried.”
Southeastern then won the first seven points of the third set, and that carried the Royals to victory.
“To battle back from that and to pull away and win 25-20, that was huge,” said Young. “I told them out in the hall, let’s win the first seven points. Abby Weber took care of business and got us up 7-0. That was pretty cool.”
The Royals are now 29-4 for the season. They played New Castle in the second match of the season and were swept by the Trojans. But that was two and a half months ago.
“We’re going to do our homework this week and we’re going to prepare,” said Young. “They’re an awful good team.”
“We’ve been pretty business as usual all year long,” said Young. “We ran practice the exact same way and we’ll continue to do that this week.”
The Hamilton Southeastern volleyball team is going to state for the first time. The Royals swept Crown Point to win the Class 4A Frankfort semi-state on Saturday, and will play New Castle in next Saturday’s state finals at Ball State University. (Kirk Green)