Edinburgh volleyball enjoying breakthrough season

EDINBURGH — Over Gracie Crawhorn’s first three years of high school, Edinburgh’s volleyball teams had a combined record of 24 wins and 65 losses, never claiming more than nine victories in a single season.

Yet Crawhorn — the Lancers’ lone senior this fall — and her teammates could always sense that the 2022 campaign was going to be different.

“We worked really hard in the summer to get to know each other better,” she said. “Our big thing this year has been working together. If we don’t work together, we don’t succeed on the court.”

The Lancers (19-10) have been succeeding more this year than they had in quite some time. With three-set sweeps of Oldenburg Academy and South Decatur on Oct. 15, Edinburgh claimed its first sectional championship since the 2011 season.

Not bad considering four years ago, the Lancers couldn’t even cobble together enough players to put a team on the floor for the sectional.

“The girls that are here have put in a lot of time and effort,” Edinburgh coach Kristi Allen said. “They’re all invested in being the best.”

That investment was evident in the offseason, when a group full of multi-sport athletes made a commitment to volleyball. Edinburgh’s entire team showed up at Hauser every Monday for summer league matches, and the success they were seeing there carried over into the regular season — the Lancers got off to a 10-2 start.

With that, confidence began to snowball.

“Summer league, they definitely saw, ‘We’re all here, we’re committed,’” Allen said. “Then when we started out strong and started winning game after game in a row, that’s different from what they’ve experienced in volleyball before, so I definitely think that helped their confidence.”

Even in losses, Edinburgh showed growth, going five sets against Indian Creek and Whiteland teams that had swept the Lancers with ease in years past.

When the sectional came, the Lancers were ready — and knowing that they’d be able to play the regional on their home floor only provided more motivation.

Crawhorn believes it’ll motivate the community to show up in full force to support the team today. Edinburgh plays a semifinal match against Indiana Deaf at 10 a.m. Should it survive, it’ll see either Indianapolis Lutheran or White River Valley in the 6 p.m. title match.

“We think we’re going to have a pretty big crowd this game coming up,” Crawhorn said. “Our whole town’s been posting about it, too, so I think we’ll have a good turnout and get to show everybody what we’ve been doing and what we’ve been working toward.”

What they’re working toward, obviously, is an eventual state championship. But hoisting a trophy this weekend would be nearly as big a deal — Edinburgh has never won a volleyball regional.

This group believes that if it can play with the cohesion it developed over the summer, that’s a glass ceiling it’s capable of cracking.

“They feel that anything’s possible,” Allen said.