GREENFIELD — He’s seen that particular point dozens of times, now.
The moment he keeps re-watching is a big one. It’s the moment Greenfield-Central’s volleyball team won a sectional title against Pendleton Heights last Saturday.
“Everyone’s got a cell phone, and everyone’s got their phone out for sectional point,” Greenfield-Central coach Travis Fuller said. “The thing I’ve absolutely loved is seeing the exact same point from 30 different people. It looks different every single time, and I can only imagine what it was like to have sat up there, thinking, ‘Are we going to do this? Is it going to happen?’ And then it happens.”
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Getting to that moment had been a long time coming. The Cougars had won six sectional titles before, but hadn’t done so since 1987. That makes 31 years of no postseason titles, a drought that finally ended in Fuller’s third year as head coach at Greenfield-Central.
Now, they get to try to end another long drought. The Cougars last won a regional title 32 years ago, after their fifth sectional championship.
The fact that they are at this point still hasn’t totally sunk in to Fuller or his players.
“It hasn’t really hit me yet,” Fuller said. “Really, when we finished Saturday night, my first thought wasn’t, ‘Oh my gosh, we just won a sectional trophy. That hasn’t been done in three decades.’ My thought was, ‘Holy cow, we played so well.’”
Fuller has watched the tape of the entire match, not just that last point, and the prevailing thought he keeps coming back to is how well his team played.
“I don’t know that there’s a lot of teams we’re going to lose to, playing like that,” he said.
Unreal feeling
The celebration afterwards was big. The celebration was fun.
It was unreal.
“I’m with Travis,” senior Haleigh Pribble said. “It hasn’t sank in for me. The only way I can describe it is it’s unreal.”
“It was crazy feeling,” sophomore Ava Antic added. “We’ve been talking about winning sectionals all year, so when it actually happened it didn’t seem real.”
But it was. Getting a sectional title wasn’t the easiest road for the Cougars, but it’s one they worked hard for, traversing the ups and downs of a regular season that started with 11 straight wins and ended with 11 total losses.
The Cougars, who play in the very difficult Hoosier Heritage Conference, boosted their out-of-conference schedule for 2018 with a slew of teams ranked in the top 40 in Indiana. They’ve played many of the teams still standing in the state tournament.
It’s been a learning experience, one that included a four-game losing streak and a tough weekend against top-level competition in early September.
“We’ve experienced great things — anywhere from the win streak to we hit a pretty low point right when we ran into that weekend with McCutcheon,” Fuller said. “You talk about getting beat up that weekend, we were a beat up team. Then we lost a heartbreaker to Lafayette Central Catholic, 20-18 in the fifth set. You never want your team to feel what they felt that weekend.”
The low points were learning opportunities in several ways. The feeling the team had after the loss to LCC stayed with them, a constant reminder.
Playing that level of competition prepared them for what was to come in sectional, and what is to come in regional play this weekend.
“We definitely have had ups and downs,” Antic said. “However, our lowest points have definitely prepared us for the big games and situations where we were under pressure. It was a positive thing to play those harder teams like McCutcheon and LCC.”
Road to a title
The road to a sectional title went through Connersville, a team they hadn’t faced this season, and two familiar foes, Mt. Vernon and Pendleton Heights.
The Connersville game presented yet another learning opportunity for the team. Losing the third set, Fuller said, wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It allowed him to get more people playing time, more sectional experience in a less pressure-packed situation.
It let the Cougars find a rhythm before facing a team that has vexed them for years, Mt. Vernon.
Toppling the Marauders was special. Mt. Vernon had eliminated Greenfield-Central from the sectional three straight years, and had bested the Cougars this year in the regular season.
“That was like my main goal, to not lose to Mt. Vernon again,” Pribble, who was there for all three sectional losses, said. “It was perfect that they matched up with us. I’m kind of glad it worked out that way. I wanted to beat them really bad.”
Then, it was Pendleton Heights, a team who also beat the Cougars during the regular season.
Greenfield-Central avenged that loss, too, earning their first title in three decades.
Three-year process
It’s a moment Fuller told his team was coming three years ago when he first took over the team. He said it was eye-opening for the team back then, but when he and his coaching staff arrived, they told the gathered Cougars the goal.
They wanted a sectional title. They were going to get one. He just wasn’t sure when.
The sophomores in the gym that day — Hannah Burkhart, Morgan Grigsby, Macy Francis, Mary Voigt and Pribble, now seniors — played a big role in making that happen so fast.
“This is a special group. This is a senior class that we absolutely adored when we first got here and they were all sophomores,” Fuller said. “We only had two seniors we were starting. The rest were sophomores. That was a group we had to grow with, we had to commit to. To be able to be a part of that sectional championship with this group, with our coaching staff, all of those things coming together, has really just been the unity and glue that we’ve had for three years.”
“They’ve made tremendous impacts on us,” Antic said of the seniors. “Each one of them has a different personality and brings something else to the team leadership-wise. They all know their place, and they all have bought into the process and allowed our team to reach our goals.”
The team has developed chemistry from playing together the last few years. They’ve developed confidence and trust in one another, genuinely supporting their teammates even when being replaced during a match by someone.
The coaches are confident in their players. The players are confident in one another. They are riding a big wave of momentum into a stacked regional, and, really, they don’t care who awaits at this stage.
“You jump two big hurdles you had earlier in the year, and now I think we’re just kind of running out into the darkness and we have no idea where this thing is going to end, and I don’t think we really care,” Fuller said. “Saturday was great volleyball, executed at an unbelievably high level. I would imagine the confidence is about as over the top on the scale of 10 as it could possibly get right now, because it should be. It should absolutely be.”
“I definitely feel like we can do anything,” Pribble added. “(Our confidence) is up there.”
The road ahead
The Cougars start with Avon, ranked third in the state and a top 25 team nationally, fresh off their 18-straight sectional title. Roncalli and Cathedral, two tradition-rich powerhouses, are on the other side of the semifinal bracket.
The Cougars have played Yorktown, the top team in Indiana. They’ve played Fishers, Hamilton Southeastern, McCutcheon and Lafayette Central Catholic, among others.
Who they go up against now doesn’t particularly matter.
“It’s all about us. We’re going to focus on ourselves,” Fuller said. “We’re just going to go out there and be the best versions of ourselves and play as hard as we can possibly play. Our kids have seen the best. It’s no different. We’re going to go out there and play hard.”
Regardless of how Saturday shakes out, Fuller is hopeful that this group has given the Greenfield-Central community something to build off of.
They’ve wanted a sectional title for years. They finally have it. Now they’ll chase a regional title, with all signs pointed at a positive future outlook for Cougars volleyball.
It isn’t about going down in history as a sectional championship team. It’s about building something bigger.
“I don’t think you really understand how much it means to people until you get it done. Then you get this overwhelming outcry,” Fuller said. “I think to have this group accomplish something like this, to have this group I think put something in concrete that says we are a good program, which we’ve been in the past, but to finally really build that tradition this year is the big hurdle and stepping stone that as a group we wanted to accomplish. I’m hoping that this creates the impact and inspiration needed to take that big step forward that Greenfield has been trying to do for so long.
“I think the senior class isn’t going to be a part of history. They are going to be a part of tradition.”
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What: Greenfield-Central Volleyball Regional
Who: Greenfield-Central, Roncalli, Cathedral, Avon
When: Saturday, 10 a.m., noon, 8 p.m.
Roncalli vs. Cathedral, 10 a.m.
Greenfield-Central vs. Avon, noon
Championship match, 8 p.m.
Where: Greenfield-Central
Cost: $7 per session, $10 season
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