EMERSON, GA – Morgan County’s volleyball program made history last Friday night when the team traveled to the LakePoint Sports Complex to take on Oconee County.
After trailing 2-1 after the first three sets, the Spike Dogs stormed back to win two straight sets and secure their first state championship in school history.
Morgan County head coach Kat Goodwin could tell her players got anxious midway through the match, but persevered through the circumstances, and stayed together as a team to raise the trophy at the end of the night.
The Spike Dogs jumped out to an early one-set lead after beating the Warriors in a close back-and-forth first set.
Morgan County scored the first couple of points out of the gate, but it was relatively close the whole way through, and the Spike Dogs found themselves tied at 18 late in that set. Fortunately for Goodwin’s squad, they came away with a close 25-23 first set.
Oconee County jumped back out with a vengeance and overwhelmed the Morgan front line multiple times throughout the next two sets. The Warriors won the second and third sets, 25-19 and 25-20, respectively.
That’s when the Spike Dogs locked in for the rest of the night, and it was in the fourth set that Goodwin felt things starting to change.
“I wish I could remember exactly what I said to them, but it was something along the lines of if your fear is losing, you’re doing it,” Goodwin said. “Here we are, and you can either choose it or you can decide to try and fix it. You feel how it feels right now, but you still have the power to change it, and they did.”
The Spike Dogs came roaring back in the fourth set and won it 25-16; the biggest margin of victory of any of the five sets that were played.
The fifth and final set was played to 15, and Goodwin’s squad found themselves in a little hole to start; however, the Spike Dogs rallied to rattle the Warriors’ confidence, and eventually took back the lead and kept it until the match was over.
The score of the final set was 15-12, and as soon as it was official, Spike Dog players stormed the court overjoyed with what they had just accomplished.
When it was all said and done, Goodwin believed many of her players stepped up when their team needed them the most, but an unlikely member of the Spike Dogs carried them to the victory and received the match ball at the end.
“I gave Presley Hill the MVP of the match. In my opinion, she never faltered in terms of playing her level and playing steady,” Goodwin said. “She didn’t make many mistakes, she knew when to be aggressive and let herself be aggressive. Presley usually plays at pace in big matches like this, but I think she finally just said `this is who I am and what I’m going to do.’”
The state championship win will mean more to the four seniors on the squad because of their ties to the situation.
Players such as Hill, Makenzie Pitzer, Addy Christian and Briana Worley were all on the state championship squad that lost in the finals back in 2020, so for them, this caps off a wonderful high school career.
Overall, Goodwin is excited for all the girls in the program. She understands that the team was young this year and will return most of its talent next season and that the volleyball landscape is shifting.
Goodwin hopes to have Morgan County’s name at the forefront of it all as the sport’s popularity continues to increase across the state.
“I didn’t know how much talent I was getting when I took over the program in 2020. I’ll take a little bit of credit, but these girls didn’t develop volleyball skills over the past two years. They’ve been working for a long, long time,” Goodwin said. “In 2020, we were one of the only public schools in the late state championship rounds, and people were almost surprised that we were there. Now, you see two public schools playing for the 3A state championship alone says something about the direction volleyball is heading, and it makes me happy that Morgan is now considered ‘elite.’”