Lakota East nears GMC boys volleyball clincher; GCL races already have winners
As the Ohio High School Athletic Association boys volleyball regular season enters its final weeks, conference championships are nearly or have already been decided in the Greater Catholic League-South, GCL-Coed, and the Greater Miami Conference with some potential title-clinchers on the horizon.
Here's a look at who is leading the race for a conference crown into the season's final stretch.
Greater Miami Conference
The race is still on in the GMC, but Sycamore's four-set loss at Fairfield on Tuesday was good news for the Lakota East Thunderhawks.
Lakota East swept the rival from Lakota West, bringing the Thunderhawks to a 6-0 record in the GMC with two more league games left. Sycamore dropped its first conference game since April 2019 with the Fairfield loss.
More: 'Everybody on the team is just a solid player': Lakota East starts run to retake GMC title
A win for Lakota East over Sycamore on April 24 would secure a solo title for the Thunderhawks for the first time since 2019 when the team won its fourth-straight title. A Sycamore win would leave the Aviators in the hunt with games at Princeton and Oak Hills remaining. Lakota East rounds out its conference slate against Mason on May 1 and will see the Comets with the title in hand or in need of a win to guarantee at least a share.
Greater Catholic League-South
The St. Xavier Bombers will try and wrap up their GCL-South schedule on a different note than last year. In 2023, St. Xavier was 17-0 overall and 5-0 in the conference before heading into Elder and falling in a five-set upset.
Like last year, the Bombers already have the GCL-South locked up, but will face Elder on Friday, April 26, to make it a clean sweep of the GCL. St. Xavier has beaten conference foes on six occasions with a sweep of Moeller in the Centerville Elite that does not count toward conference records.
Barring a double upset of Elder over St. Xavier and La Salle over Moeller, the GCL-South will finish with St. Xavier in first, followed by Moeller, Elder and La Salle for the second-straight season.
Greater Catholic League-Coed
Sitting with an 8-0 record in the GCL-Coed, McNicholas needed to win just one more conference game to secure the solo conference title. Those final two conference games were scheduled for Carroll, the team on the opposite side of the spectrum from the Rockets with an 0-8 mark in the GCL Coed.
No big upset came when Carroll visited McNicholas on April 23 as the Rockets won in straight sets, moving to 9-0 in the conference and winning its first title in over a decade. They will finish the GCL campaign at Carroll on April 30.
Fenwick, which won the conference in 2023, finished its Coed run with an 8-2 mark with a five-set loss to McNicholas to open the year and a straight-set loss on April 15.
The Rockets improved to 14-3 overall for the season with the win over Carroll with losses only to St. Charles, St. Xavier and Lakota East.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Who holds first in GCL-South, GCL-Coed and GMC boys volleyball races?
