ACE volleyball loses dramatic playoff match in five sets to Haralson Co.

Maybe Zoie South had the right idea, or knew how tight things would be.

The senior setter from Haralson County spent the break between the second and third sets of the Rebels’ second-round GHSA Class A volleyball tournament match at ACE Charter face down on the floor, with a small fan aimed at her face.

At that point, the match was tied at 1, and both teams had 50 points.

The roller coaster continued, but the Rebels dug out of an early hole in the fifth set to edge ACE 3-2 on Saturday afternoon.

“We don’t like to make things easy on ourselves,” Haralson County head coach Corey Huffman said. “We always make it a little tough on ourselves.”

ACE’s season ended at 25-12 while Haralson County continues on at 19-14.

The 20^th-seeded Rebels enjoyed their second straight trip to Central Georgia, having blanked No. 13 Taylor County 3-0 on Wednesday before taking down No. 4 ACE.

“We call this kind of team scrappy,” ACE head coach Lonnie Wheeler said. “They’re very scrappy. They had, at least for today, their service as a team was probably a little better than ours. If we played them again in a week, it might be us having a better service.”

Haralson County hadn’t won a first-round game, let alone one in Round 2, in half-dozen or so years, but didn’t play that way.

The Rebels were down 13-8 in the first set, but got on a 4-0 run behind the serving of Alyssa Hyatt and tied it at 13, then rode a few aces from South en route to a 17-15 lead.

ACE cut into a 21-17 deficit and got within one twice down the stretch, but a kill from South ended Haralson County’s 25-23 win.

ACE went from a 5-3 lead in the second set to a 10-5 deficit as Haralson County showed more of a superb ability to dig and save and keep tough shots alive.

But Catrece Donaghy sparked a comeback and ACE went on a 9-1 run. The teams traded runs of three or four straight points. Haralson County led 24-21, but the Gryphons came back to tie twice, taking advantage of two straight unforced errors for a 27-25 win.

The teams showed it was clear this would go the distance. Almost.

“We tried to master our rotations,” Wheeler said. “Their No. 2 (Serenity Fisher) was their best hitter, and tried to match up our better blocking sequences with her.”

Fisher had stretches of quality serves, but was of more impact being set up for power volleys.

Haralson County was on point early in the third set, storming out to leads of 6-2 and 11-3 with more winners than anything. The margin was 18-7 before the Gryphons battled back to avoid a humbling loss, but the Rebels countered and closed it out for a 25-20 win and 2-1 lead.

The Rebels had some trouble adjusting to the facility, with many shots bouncing off the roof of the ACE gym and off the long air vent pipes as well as basketball goals. ACE was always ready to react, but Haralson County was flat-footed several times as the ball hit the court.

One ball later on finished the match sitting way above the court, having settled on a goal.

The momentum didn’t last, and everything Haralson County was doing well more often than ACE was more or less matched by the hosts with their backs to the wall.

Even after a Haralson County timeout, the ACE lead grew to 12-3, the Gryphons mixing touch and power. It blew up to 16-4, again with Donaghy providing a boost, and maxed out at 14 points until ACE finished off Haralson County 25-13 to tie it.

“We have a tendency to get down on ourselves when we make a few mistakes, and we just kind of let those pile up on us in that set,” Huffman said. “I’m glad to see that we can rebound from it.”

Indeed.

“We won the toss for the fifth set,” Wheeler said. “Which is always a big deal. I felt like we just … That opportunity slipped out of grasp. We call it a ‘race to 15’, so I felt like when we won the toss, we had a really good shot.”

For the third straight set, the team that would lose it scored first. But ACE went up 7-5, keyed by two winners from Grace Pinholster. The Rebels eliminated all the issues from the 12-point loss with a 7-3 run, magnified in the fifth set, when 15 points wins it.

A weak hit at the net allowed ACE to get within 13-12. But at 14-13, Storie South ended it with a block that found a spot between Gryphons, completing the ACE careers of Donaghy, Camryn Ussery, Kate Thomason, and Madison Edwards.

Overall, ACE outscored Haralson County 108-103, thanks to that fourth set.

“They were putting a lot of balls in play deep in the court and towards the corners,” Wheeler said. “I think we could have covered better than we did today.

“Anytime you go to state and go to five sets, it’s hard to be severely disappointed. You want to end the match thinking we played well. Maybe we didn’t win this time, but we played well today.”