Picture perfect: Kings Mountain volleyball outlasts Orange to claim NCHSAA 3A state title
RALEIGH — Heather Pasour wanted her Kings Mountain volleyball team to have an image of what a NCHSAA 3A state championship looked like.
“We’ve talked about it all season. We have a spot on the wall (of Kings Mountain’s Donald Parker Gymnasium) for our picture, a spot that’s clearly for us,” she said. "The two volleyball state champions before us have their pictures on the wall. That’s been a focal point for us.”
Added senior outside hitter Meile Songaila: “I think we’d always heard about the team that won 20 years before us; we’d see them in the gym every time we’d go to practice. We wanted so badly to be that team that 20 years from now, kids come in the gym and see us on the wall.”
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After Saturday, it’s safe to say the 2023 Kings Mountain volleyball team has earned legendary status.
The Lady Mountaineers outlasted Orange at NC State’s Reynolds Coliseum to claim the NCHSAA 3A state title, 3-2. It is the program’s third championship, joining those won in 1998 and 2001.
“I told them to focus on five, focus on 10; don’t focus on the next set, focus on the now,” Pasour said. “We flipped the lineup in the fourth set, and that was a real difference-maker for us.”
Kings Mountain had an easy go of things in the first set, taking it 25-12. Orange twice staved off set point to claim a 27-25 win in the second. The final point in the second set lasted just shy of 60 seconds, leaving players on both sides exhausted.
Orange’s momentum continued into the third, the Panthers earning a 25-20 win.
Kings Mountain jumped out to a 14-7 lead in the fourth, doing enough to hold off Orange and send the match to a fifth set, 25-21.
The Lady Mountaineers won the fifth, 15-12, to end a 22-year title drought.
Songaila was voted most valuable player of the 3A title match. Though quick to mention her senior standout’s contribution, Pasour said anything less than a team effort wouldn’t have reaped the desired result.
“(Songaila and fellow senior Myracle Davis) were outstanding, the both of them are leaders for this team,” the Kings Mountain volleyball coach said. “The thing about our team is, those two are our core players. But if anyone (on our team) had been off today, we wouldn’t have won a state championship.”
This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: NCHSAA volleyball: Kings Mountain downs Orange to claim 3A state title
