SALTVILLE, Va.
Showing quite the level of resolve, Northwood notched a 15-25, 22-25, 25-23, 25-19, 16-14 victory over George Wythe in the semifinals of the Hogoheegee District tournament.
The second-seeded Panthers will play regular-season champion and top-seed Patrick Henry tonight at 7:15 in the tournament title match.
On Wednesday, the Panthers dropped the first two games and had to rally for a pulsating win in a back-and-forth match that took over two hours to play.
"We got off to a slow start," said Holley, a 2005 Northwood graduate, who took over at her alma mater shortly before the season began. "But they have a lot of heart and a lot of drive and they managed to find it."
Kristin Dean was the catalyst in the fifth and decisive game as the 5-foot-7 junior had four of her 17 kills during the clincher.
"It was a little nerve-wracking," Dean said. "We just had to concentrate on everything we did. We couldn’t do anything wrong. …We worked a lot in practice this week on spot hitting. I was hitting the spots a lot."
Holley was not surprised with the effort put forth by the energetic Dean.
"She’s pretty key," Holley said. "She’s one of our up players, because she can get the other players up. Her front row ability is good."
Summer Frye also had a solid all-around match with 33 assists and eight aces among her 16 service points. JoJo Ison (23 digs) and Chelsey Cardwell (12 kills) were vital to the victory.
The relentless Cardwell was one of the players to spark the comeback.
"It was heated," Cardwell said. "It’s kind of hard to get your mindset back after you lose the first two games. But we pulled together and finally played as a team."
She was also relieved when Northwood stormed out to a 5-1 lead in the fifth game and held on.
"We had to," Cardwell said. "We’re the type if we get too far down we get in our heads we can’t get back up. We got a good start and that helped us win."
Northwood now gets its third shot at powerful PH. The Rebels beat Northwood in three games in both regular-season matches.
"We’re coming tomorrow and we’ll just play as hard as we can," Holley said.
