Lake Catholic volleyball’s balanced attack captures third straight OHSAA state championship

FAIRBORN, Ohio — Lake Catholic faced something in Friday's 2024 OHSAA Division V state volleyball final vs. Franklin Bishop Fenwick that hadn't happened all postseason. The Cougars had not lost a set in the tournament until the second set of Friday's final match.

But the Cougars got back on track and behind their balanced offense, they won their third consecutive state championship, 25-18, 18-25, 25-14, 25-20, at the Nutter Center on the campus of Wright State University.

Four different Cougars (24-4) had double-digit kills, led by 16 from sophomore outside hitter Ahnna Bergant.

"It's huge," said senior Ava Budrys Rini, who had 12 kills. "Blockers on the other side don't really know where to cheat because the ball can go so many different places, and it's always a consistent and good swing."

Lake Catholic closed out the first set on a 10-3 run. But Bishop Fenwick (16-13) responded well, winning the second set to even the match at 1-1.

"I think the second set, we just kind of got ahead of ourselves for a second," Lake Catholic coach Tess Connolly said. "We had to kind of get a little bit more grounded, control what we could control and identity what the basics are and kind of thrive in that area first and then move forward."

Lake Catholic's defense turned things up in the third set, recording six of its 10 blocks in that set on its way to going up 2-1 in the match. The Cougars also committed just two attack errors and forced 12 from the Falcons to regain control of the match.

"We weren't super disciplined on our game plan, and part of our game plan was blocking," Connolly said. "We kind of talked about it, adjusted it a little bit from there and then did a great job. Middles and pins did a great job of closing that block, identifying what hitters were up front and kind of going with the game plan."

The Cougars closed things out in the fourth set with the help of their service game. As a team, they combined for 13 aces, six of which came in the fourth set. Three Lake Catholic players had at least three aces.

Avery Budrys Rini, who had 10 kills in attack, had all three of her aces in the final set.

"We really love getting teams out of system and kind of controlling the tempo, and that's really one of our strong suits," Connolly said. "We have great servers, so just being able to be aggressive at the first offensive point of the game is really huge."

Senior Natalya Bergant added 11 kills for Lake Catholic.

The win gave Lake Catholic its fourth volleyball state championship in school history. The first came in 2010, and this season's senior class will graduate having added three more titles to the program.

"I think we just really wanted to prove to everyone that we are an amazing team, and we have had a lot of doubt. People didn't really know if we could do it, but it just means a lot to us," senior libero Julia Oster said. "I think it shows how hard we work and just nice to be able to prove to everyone that we are Lake Catholic volleyball."