HS VOLLEYBALL: Catholic moving up to top status
First-year varsity player Maria Schwarz (20), a freshman, sets up a shot for four-year starter Julienne Pharrams, one of the Knights’ two seniors. (Eddie Olszewski)
By TIM GAYLE
Two players were promoted from the junior varsity, two had moved in and several others had varsity volleyball experience but were unproven at that level.
Catholic coach Sellers Dubberley knew he had the talent but it takes more than that to win in a competitive part of the state that includes some of the best volleyball talent.
“Talented players don’t necessarily make a good team,” he said. “There’s so much more that goes into it. There are so many moving parts that it’s really easy for it to not click and not work out. More often than not, that’s the case.”
Like other volleyball programs, the Knights started in the heat of the summer as volunteer workouts continued day after day in an air-conditioned gym. There was no guarantee of success, just a belief that dedication to the fundamentals would pay off.
“The dynamic of each team that I played on for varsity has been different,” said sophomore Mally Barranco, a three-year starter. “This team had a lot of different pieces and a lot of different things that haven’t gone together before. We’re still working that out and we’ve worked really hard with new girls, young girls, girls that have been here before, just getting everybody to work together.”
After fielding a squad that had seven seniors in 2019 and six seniors in 2020, this unit is relatively young, with only Julienne Pharrams and Auburn Wilcoxson as seniors.
“I feel like we had a lot of potential and we still do have a lot of potential to make it even further,” Wilcoxson said. “But at first, with new faces and younger girls, I was like, ‘Is this going to work out?’ But when we started having more practices and we did team bonding, it went to a different level as a team and I saw us grow in the game and get better.”
Dubberley took his team to a July camp in Foley conducted by the University of West Florida. As UWF instructors drilled his players on the concepts of volleyball, Dubberley filled up a notebook, then another notebook, as he studied his players, trying to make sure the right pieces were in the right place.
“That let me sit back and really evaluate,” Dubberley said. “Take notes on what I’m seeing -- who’s fitting where, what tempo we need to be running, what blocking scheme so-and-so is able to do.”
He lost one of his front-line starters during that period as well, forcing more changes, but Dubberley came away from the camp with an idea of how to make it work.
“A lot of what I saw at team camp were offensive and defensive styles,” he said. “There were times when it was not meshing. When we got back, we took a long look at tempo and making sure everyone was seeing the game the same way, anticipating the same things. That was a huge task.
“We were going to have to work to make this successful. We had all different styles -- some people are used to running a certain speed of offense, some people are used to certain defensive strategies. We worked all summer on just getting people on the same page.”
The players remember the camp for another reason.
“I was only close with a few girls on the team,” Wilcoxson said. “I didn’t really know Allyse (Rudolph, a transfer from Marbury), I didn’t know Lennon (McAnnally, a transfer from Prattville Christian), then we got to the team camp and the more we started talking, the more we got closer. It really helped us form the relationship that we have.”
“I think that was the first time we could see that we actually had potential,” Barranco said. “We could see us playing against other teams from here, like Trinity, and everyone else, that was the first time we could see that we could actually be good.”
The Knights opened the season against three-time defending state champion Montgomery Academy. The Eagles are in a serious rebuilding phase as well, but a 3-0 sweep of the city’s traditional volleyball power sent a message to the team and its opponents of its potential.
Along the way, there have been tournament losses to powerful teams -- 6A teams St. Paul’s Episcopal and McGill-Toolen in a tournament in the Huntsville area, 6A Pelham and 5A Bayside Academy in the Mayor’s Cup and Brookstone School in an Auburn High tournament -- but no losses to anyone else, a remarkable level of consistency for a team with so little varsity experience together.
“We haven’t slipped up and lost even a set,” Dubberley said. “We have dips but it hasn’t been to the point of losing games we shouldn’t. They find ways to win those games and most of the time convincingly.”
That should be enough to convince the players they’re on a championship-caliber team. It doesn’t.
“I think in the beginning, we set standards for ourselves and if we don’t meet those standards as a team, then it lets us down a little bit,” Barranco said. “The standards are high most of the time -- all the time, really -- and we’re just trying to reach those.”
“Hard competition is good competition,” Wilcoxson said. “Regardless of the situation, we’re going to work so hard, we’re not going to let down what our standard is. When we have ‘slower’ weeks, it’s relieving but then we can work on different things and find different ways to put the pieces together.”
Catholic’s Area 6 wins over Prattville Christian and Trinity gave the Knights a 2-0 lead in area play, a huge step toward hosting the area tournament as the top seed in the best three-team area in the state.
“Both of those games were very tough,” Wilcoxson said. “We came out on top in the end. That’s what I expected of us because our standards are up there. It’s good to have those games, so you can see what works and doesn’t work. So when we continue to play them, we know what to pinpoint.”
Catholic has a handful of games remaining in the regular season, including area matches at home over the next two Thursdays with Trinity and Prattville Christian. The top two teams from Area 6, if the past is any indication, are likely to end up in the state tournament with a shot at the 3A title. No one could have envisioned that scenario back in June from this Catholic team.
“I knew that by the end of the year, we should be a team that had as good a chance as any and that’s still the same boat we’re in,” Dubberley said. “But I’d be lying if I said, ‘We’ll be 28-5 at the end of September.’ I never would have imagined that, not with what we had to deal with and what we had to work on.”