Photos by Jim Marczesky Cardinal Newman’s Erin Zander goes for a kill against Hammond. SUMTER – After Cardinal Newman’s first and last matches of the day Saturday, volleyball coach Bob Watson immediately guided his team out of the building and out of hearing range.

The first meeting was tough love.

The second meeting was just tough.

In between, the players added a lengthy oncourt, mid–match heart– to–heart.

However, none of the words could get the Cardinals past two Charlestonarea teams, which proved opposite sides of the same coin, and to the SCISA Class 3A state final Cardinal Newman coveted.

In the first match, Porter Gaud demonstrated again that it was the only team capable, across its lineup, of consistently playing above the net, giving them the leverage, vision, power and angles to dissect any team. And dissect a lifeless Cardinal Newman team they did: 25–14, 25–16.

Cardinal Newman’s Denise Jeanmougin slams the ball against Porter–Gaud. Hours later, even mere mention of the meeting that followed that match prompted senior Denise Jeanmougin to widen her eyes, tighten her smile, and chuckle nervously.

“He told us we had to want to be here; that we had to want to win it.” Jean- mougin said after a pause to consider how to describe the message Watson delivered.

Jeanmougin spent the day as a marked woman. Against Porter Gaud, no other option emerged. Against Hammond, a 29–27, 25–18 victory, and Ashley Hall, senior Erin Zander stepped up.

“It finally hit me that our season was going to end either (Saturday) or Tuesday, so why should I get all scared or worked up about something that was going to happen and let it affect how I played until it happened,” Zander said. “I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t pull myself together for my teammates. I was thinking about myself in that first match; in the last two I was thinking about my team.”

Cardinal Newman’s Nazley Wilson makes the dig against Hammond. The result was obvious and pivotal.

“Erin didn’t get a lot of respect this year, but when she was consistently playing to her abilities, she raised the entire team’s play,” Watson said. “She just added another dimension to our attack because you can’t go to one girl all the time, and everyone knows how good Denise is.”

Facing Hammond was as much a motivator as any message from Watson.

“Considering Hammond knocked us out on the same court last year; they had already beaten us once this year, and they’re our rivals, we owed them something,” Jeanmougin said.

That victory put Cardinal Newman into the semifinals against Ashley Hall, which proved just as dispiriting an opponent as Porter Gaud had.

“When Ashley Hall got everything we hit back up into play, it was like, ‘oh, my God,’” Zander said. “We didn’t know what to do. They were on the attack with their passes while we were on the attack with our hits.”

Watson exhorted them during time outs to keep firing away, but Ashley Hall’s disciplined back line met few shots it couldn’t successfully dig and was repeatedly in the correct position to field deflections off blocks—two abilities Cardinal Newman could not match. The result was a 25–17 first game victory that prompted Cardinal Newman’s starters to gather before the start of Game 2.

“We told each other that this is what we had been working for all season,” Zander said. “Ashley Hall was who we wanted. Now that we were here, we couldn’t hold anything back. We needed to leave everything out on the floor.”

The resolve didn’t change the final score; another 25–17 outcome ended the season and prompted the final gathering.

“I told them I was proud of them,” Watson said. “I can live with the Ashley Hall result. I can’t be happy because we didn’t win, but I can live with it. It’s just tough to see our four seniors leave. (Reserve California Torry is the fourth.)”

And it was that realization that made the last meeting so difficult and kept every player outside sharing hugs and tears long after Watson returned inside.

“So much of this team has been together since I was in ninth grade,” senior Nazley Wilson said trying to put feelings into words. “We thought we would be in that final game this time. That was our goal. … We came close. … We gave it all we had.”