GAINESVILLE, Ga. — It had been four years since Cherokee Bluff had last reached the Final 4 of the Georgia High School Association volleyball playoffs.
Senior Brooklyn Knight made sure the Lady Bears would get another shot before her class moved on Wednesday night. Knight capped a frenetic 9-point run with a match-clinching kill to propel Bluff to a 3-2 win over North Hall in the Class 3A quarterfinals.
After the two teams alternated wins in the first four games of the best-of-five match, North Hall looked ready to close it out using a 5-0 run for an 11-6 lead. But the Lady Trojans would not score again.
“I’ve gone through runs like that,” Knight said. “But I was like, ‘it’s not gonna end like that.’ I just kept pushing my team together to get there.”
But when asked if she felt confident they could win the final game, Bluff coach Tiann Myers admitted the doubts began creeping in.
“I was feeling the opposite of (confident) when it was like 11-7, 11-8,” she said. “But then when we got to 11-10, I knew that if we could just get one more, I knew that we could finish it off.”
The North Hall serving run by Darby Ward ended with her sixth serve sailing long. Bluff’s Stella Lioi capped a long rally with a tip over the defense, and then North Hall committed six consecutive errors to give the Lady Bears three match points.
“I’m kind of speechless right now,” Myers said. “This team’s been together for two solid years. But we had just talked about digging deep. And they did.”
North Hall opened the match with a 25-21 win in the first game despite falling down 10-5 early on. Bluff answered with a 25-18 in the second game after rallying from a 6-3 deficit.
The Lady Trojans took a 2-1 lead, getting a game-clinching tip-winner from Abbie Hanlon for a 25-22 win. But the Lady Bears once again responded, leading almost from start to finish for a 25-19 win to send it to a deciding Game 5.
Now, Bluff will travel to Augusta on Saturday to take on top-seeded Richmond Academy (35-3) in the semifinals.
“They have two big guns, but right now we’re just going to enjoy tonight’s moment,” Myers said. “Tomorrow we’ll get back at it and just watch film and work on our game.”
The Lady Musketeers knocked out the Lady Bears in the second round in 2024.
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