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One tearful goodbye

Ryan Lavner, Highlands Today

Lake Placid senior Kayla Summerfield returns a serve during the Green Dragons' three-set loss to Clearwater Central Catholic on Tuesday night in the regional quarterfinals.

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By RYAN LAVNER

Highlands Today

Published: November 5, 2009

LAKE PLACID - It didn't quite sink in until 20 minutes after the final point was struck, long after the spectators had made their way toward the exit.

It didn't quite register until after the team-wide hug and postgame cheer, which was usually performed under much happier circumstances.

No, it didn't quite hit Marilyn Jones until celebrated senior Sierra Weaver, bag slung over her shoulder, emerged from the locker room and made her way across the Green Dragons gym.

Jones then embraced Weaver - and, reluctantly, the finality of the moment.

"I can't really say what I'm thinking, I don't know," Jones said, tears beginning to drip from her eyes. "You think about that they're done, and I wanted a little more for them to end with."

For the fifth straight year, Lake Placid was bounced from the regional quarterfinals, this time by Clearwater Central Catholic 13-25, 17-25, 17-25 in front of an appreciative home crowd.

And just like that, Jones' career on the Lake Placid sideline was over. After more than a decade with the program, she moved one step closer to retirement.

"This wasn't really a step that I wanted to take this quick," Jones admitted. "This is a wrap for me right here. I hated to see it end like this, but it's going to one way or another."

After the match, Jones huddled the girls by the net one final time, arm in arm. They bounced and they cheered, and then split off to find parents and friends.

Jones mingled in the middle of the court, too, cheerfully accepting congratulations on a fifth consecutive district title. But then she ran into Weaver, the undisputed team captain.

"You did all you can do," a tearful Jones said, hugging Weaver.

On this night, at this time, Clearwater Central Catholic was just too dominant - with its serves, with its passes, with its hits.

Facing a kind of offensive assault it had not yet seen, Lake Placid led just twice, and never when the score had reached double-digits.

"We just came out a little bit flat," Jones said. "We couldn't really get going, and they had some hard hits and we were a little slow getting to them, and if you're going to play at the next level, you're going to have to be quicker and going to have to be more consistent than we were Tuesday night."

The Marauders jumped out to an 11-3 lead in the first set, decimating Lake Placid's back-row players, forcing them to scramble, slide and flop on their stomachs just to keep the point alive.

"They had strong hitters," middle blocker Marissa Baldwin said, "but we just didn't play our game like we should have."

The Marauders' serves - whether they were jumping, lofting or spiking - were well-spotted and, apparently, too much to handle.

When Lake Placid did extend the play, the Marauders came in waves, one strong-armed hitter after another, until the Green Dragons defense was scattered, out of position.

"We'd just get a knuckle on them, and that's not enough to do anything with it," Jones said.

Nearly three months ago, during preseason practice, Jones termed this season, her last on the sideline, a "rebuilding year," after the Green Dragons graduated seven seniors from last year's squad.

This new core of girls played club ball together in the summer. And the Strive for Five, she figured, would depend largely on how the underclassmen meshed with the senior leaders, including Weaver and outside hitter Kayla Summerfield.

"The girls stepped up," Jones said, "and they stepped up from the get-go."

Yes, the long-term goal was to win a fifth straight district title. But Weaver and the rest of the Green Dragons also wanted something else: the school's first-ever regional victory, for themselves, for Jones.

"I'm not satisfied with just districts," Weaver said. "I wanted to go further than that. But that's what we're going to have to settle with for now."

Ryan Lavner can be reached at 863-386-5841 or rlavner@highlandstoday.com

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