Southern Ohio Sports Authority is presented by OhioHealth.
WAVERLY — Silver isn’t an option for Southeastern. For the Panthers, it’s gold or bust.
Last fall, the program’s season came to a close in a district championship match. After the loss, the team received silver runner-up medallions.
The Panthers still vividly remember the feeling and took a huge step in righting that wrong with a four-set win over Huntington in a Division III district semifinal on Wednesday — a 25-19, 23-25, 26-24, 25-23 final.
CREDIT: Derrick Webb/SOSA
Southeastern (19-4) will now have the chance to win its first district championship since 2018. And you can bet your bottom dollar the team knows silver doesn’t shine like gold.
“They’re a special group,” Southeastern coach Ashton Ward said. “Huntington is a tough team and they threw a lot at us. It was a lot different than when we played them in league play. But the girls made the adjustments and played through it. The whole [tournament] run, they’ve been saying ‘gold,’ That’s their word. They don’t want the silver medals. They want gold.”
When you have the SVC Player of the Year at your disposal, it doesn’t hurt your cause.
Junior Jozy Lougheed made her presence known early and often, living up to her reputation. She ended the night with a full stat sheet, including 22 kills, 13 assists and 17 digs.
“It feels so great to win and it gives us so much motivation moving forward,” Lougheed said. “We really want to make it to [the] state [tournament]. I think we can do that. When [Huntington] was close to us [late in the game], there was a lot of pressure. But we pushed through.”
Lougheed and Abby Uhrig teamed up to help Southeastern take a 6-3 lead out of the gates. The pair then passed the torch to Morgan Ware and Reese Ruckel, who extended the advantage to 10-5.
It was a lead the Panthers never lost sight of. Lougheed gave SE leads of 15-12 and 16-13, and finished off the first set with back-to-back kills to seal a six-point win.
In the second, Gracie Brown got the Panthers rolling before Ware logged two early kills to give SE a 10-6 edge. But Huntington (14-9) battled back and ripped off a 6-0 run to take a 13-10 advantage, courtesy of Emma Hinshaw at the net and London Keiser-Fultz at the service line.
That momentum shift allowed the Huntsmen to keep pelting the Panthers’ defense and rotate them out of their usual positions, a movement led by Kaci Carroll. The junior gave her team leads of 20-17 and 21-19 before Hinshaw put a cap on a 25-23 victory to even the match.
“They struggle at times to be leaders and they sometimes struggle to talk,” Ward said. “They want to lead by example and we’ve been working on those things, talking and playing as a team. But our six seniors, as a whole, hold our team together. We would not be the same team without any one of them.”
Hinshaw and Carroll went back to work in the third, seizing a 5-2 lead early. Southeastern then took a 10-8 lead before Huntington went ahead 14-12, forcing Ward to call for a timeout.
Whatever she said resonated with her troops.
After fighting to tie the score, Lougheed later put her Panthers ahead 19-17. And while Carroll and Hinshaw tried with all their might to will their team to a win, Ware was there to shut the door late in the set, logging two consecutive kills in a pivotal 26-24 victory.
“I think they finally realized, it was like, ‘Hey, we’re done if we don’t pick it up.’ They don’t want to be done,” Ward said. “They finally just came out and talked and they locked in.”
In the third, Southeastern took leads of 3-2, 8-5 and 15-10. The Huntsmen then again clawed their way back into the game with brief scoring bursts, and even took a late 22-21 lead.
But Lougheed managed to find a pair of holes in Huntington’s defense to put SE in front at 23-22, which was enough of a momentum burst to help SE close out a match-clinching win.
Statistically, Lougheed was flanked by Ware, who ended the evening with 17 kills and 17 digs. Chloe Wills added 29 assists, Jessie Higley led the defense with 20 digs and Ruckel finished the night with five solo blocks.
While the Huntsmen’ season comes to an end, Southeastern advances to a Division III district final on Saturday at Waverly with the start time to be determined.
The Panthers will match up with Nelsonville-York — a three-set winner over North Adams — and will, of course, be searching for gold.
“We’ve watched a lot of film [on Nelsonville] and we’ve scouted because we had it in our mind that we were going to win this game,” Ward said. “So it’s going to be hard, but we’re going to lock in and focus. We struggled with serve receive tonight and getting a clean block. We made some errors. But we’re going to lock in and move forward.”
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