By Mark Carpenter
People’s Defender
Though the regular season is still a week away, the 2026 high school volleyball campaign got its official start last Friday night at Ripley High School as the Southern Hills Athletic Conference hosted the annual Volleyball Preview Night, featuring all 10 teams in five match ups participating in a two-set format. Though the regular season intensity was not as evident and a number of players were missing for vacations and other reasons, it was an opportunity for coaches and fans to see their teams in action in an official setting.
The match ups for the night were determined by a coaches poll conducted by C103 Radio and the opener saw the host Ripley Lady Jays taking two sets from the Whiteoak Lady Wildcats 21-19, 21-20. (The two sets were played to 21 without the provision of winning by two points as in the regular season.)
The first Adams County team to take the floor were the Manchester Lady Greyhounds, coached once again this season by MHS grad Morgan Johnson. The Lady Hounds’ roster includes five seniors, two juniors, and five sophomores. The elected match ups assume that the teams will be evenly matched and that was the case as Manchester battled the Eastern Brown Lady Warriors.
In a match that saw a lot of volleying back and forth, the Lady Warriors took an 11-6 lead in the first set before a service ace by Manchester’s Peyton Hayslip made it 11-9. With kills from Bently Burns and Kendall Spriggs, Eastern extended their advantage to 19-10. A kill by Hayden Rideout and ace from Maddie Easter kept the Lady Hounds alive but it was eventually Eastern taking the first set 21-13.
In the second set, the Lady Hounds were plagued by numerous service errors and fell behind 8-3, only to rally to tie with a 5-0 run spurred by a pair of Madison Calvert service aces plus another Rideout kill. The Lady Warriors pulled back in front 15-13 and navigated their way to a 21016 win and a sweep of the two sets.
“I felt like we hard worked on a lot of things to get ready for this preview but I think we were struck with a case of nerves,” coach Johnson said in her postgame radio interview. “I could see it on their faces and I’m not sure why because they didn’t seem nervous in warm ups but when the match started the nerves seemed to kick in.”
“I was a little frustrated with the service errors because we do service drills every day at practice, but this is just a showcase to see what things we need to work on and I am excited to get back in the gym and work on those things.”
The Lady Hounds will open regular season play on Wednesday, August 19 with a non-conference road trip to Portsmouth West.
The preview’s next match up involved the two teams picked by the coaches to place third in their respective divisions and both of those teams hailed from Adams County as Coach Kiersten Rowe and the West Union Lady Dragons faced the Peebles Lady Indians under the direction of head coach Mariah Byers. It was two teams with very different rosters, the Lady Dragons boasting seven seniors, while the Lady Indians have just two upperclassmen to go along with eight freshmen and sophomores.
In a foretelling of what could be a hotly contested regular season match August 27, the two county squads battled to a split. In the opening set, the score was even at 6 before West Union senior Jocelyn Hall stepped back to the service line. Hall proceeded to rattle off 14 consecutive points, six of those coming on service aces, also aided by a Kaydence Cook block and kill. West Union went on to win the first set by a final count of 21-8.
The second set was a lot more competitive as the young Peebles squad shook off their early jitters.West Union did take an early 6-2 advantage on the strength of a service ace from Ashlynn Johnson, only to see the Lady Indians rally behind aces from freshman Zaylee McClanahan and sophomore Riley Byers. The scoreboard rotated back and forth over the next few points with an Amryn Carroll kill putting Peebles in front 15-13. West Union bounced right back to tie the set at 16 apiece and an ace from Lylah Adams deadlocked things at 18, but the set’s final three points went to the Lady Indians as they gained the split with a 21-18 victory.
“Our only senior didn’t join the team until just a few days ago,” Peebles Coach Byers told C103 Radio. “The girls told me before it even started that they were nervous and it’s just a whole learning thing. We treated tonight as a scrimmage and it gives us a baseline of what we need to work on, what we’re strong on, what we’re not and we will just go from there. We’re so young and every year is different because you’re plugging in different kids and trying to learn to play together as a team but this year we have kids that haven’t really run in a rotation and now we are plugging them in at the varsity level and that’s a huge step.”
“We’ve gone from having strong power hitters last year to just having hitters this year and that is hard at this level. It’s really too early for me to locate our strengths because we’re still just trying to get everything together.”
West Union head coach Kiersten Rowe is entering her fifth season at the helm and she also had her time in a post-match radio interview.
“I think we came out in that second set thinking we could kind of coast through and our serving hurt us, other than Jocelyn in that first set” said Rowe. “We’ve only had a week of practice and because of vacations and camps we really haven’t worked with a full team, but there’s always room for improvement and hopefully we will have everybody back soon.”
“I feel like we have a pretty well-rounded team. We have our good hitters and our solid back row people so I’m hoping we match up well with whoever we are playing. We have a lot of seniors and I am hoping that our experience will come into play.”
The Lady Dragons open their 2926 regular season and conference play on August 19 when they will host North Adams. Peebles will open at home the same night, hosting the Northwest Lady Mohawks in a non-conference match.
The fourth match up of the preview saw the Lynchburg-Clay Lady Mustangs win both sets over the Fayetteville Lady Rockets 21-17, 21-14.
The final match of the preview saw the two teams that the coaches picked to win the big and small school division. The easy choice was Coach Katie Ragan, in her 24th season, and her North Adams Lady Devils in the big school division, who have finished 13-0 in conference play for the past three seasons , capturing three consecutive gold ball trophies. The pick in the small school was the very talented Fairfield Lady Lions, who finished 10-3 in the SHAC last fall.
The Lady Devils have one of the most dominant front lines in southeast Ohio but on Friday night were missing two-thirds of that trio as the Pistole sisters, Emma and Ava, were showing their livestock at the Ohio State Fair. That left the third member of the trio, sophomore Sophia Barlow, and she handled the task well with a big night at the preview.
The first set would have been a barnburner in the regular season as the two teams went blow for blow, neither team able to build a substantial advantage until the Lady Lions reeled off six straight to take a 16-9 lead. with Barlow getting a pair of kills and a pair of service aces, the Lady Devils went on an 8-1 run to tie the set at 17. Two kills from senior Remi Moon gave Fairfield a one-point advantage but a service error provided an opening for North Adams and the Lady Devils took advantage, scoring three of the set’s final four points to prevail by the slimmest of margins, 21-20.
The second set was not nearly as competitive, thought North Adams took a quick 6-1 lead on the serves of senior Morgan Wheeler. plus kills from Barlow and Tailor Lloyd. Fairfield fought back to tie the set at 7 apiece and then went on an 8-0 run on the strength of some strong serving from junior Addison Cannon. The Lady Lions coasted from there, overcoming kills from Barlow and Riley Woods for North Adams, taking the second set 21-12 for the split.
“Tonight gave us an opportunity to see some other players in some different positions,” Coach Ragan commented in her postgame radio interview. “Some of our girls really took advantage of that opportunity and we are still trying to figure some things out with serve-receive and our setting because we just didn’t play as much this summer as we normally do and we’ve only had four days of practice and we still have a lot of work to do.”
Coach Ragan and the Lady Devils will begin their defense of the SHAC big school title on August 19 when they travel to West Union to open conference play.
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