Waynesburg chalks up another program first with PIAA win
Waynesburg Central’s girls volleyball team added another first to its program resume Tuesday night.
A year ago the Raiders reached the WPIAL semifinals for the second time and earned their first trip to the PIAA tournament.
This season’s team matched that and did the 2025 squad one better.
Waynesburg earned its first state playoff victory, defeating host Chestnut Ridge in four sets, to advance to Saturday’s quarterfinals against WPIAL champion Freeport.
The site and time for that match is to be determined.
Set scores were 25-27, 25-19, 25-22 and 25-15.
“It’s another step in the right direction,” Raiders coach Dan Higinbotham said. “We’re still advancing and now we’ve gotten further than we ever have before.
“It makes me very proud.”
Harper Grimes turned in another stellar all-around performance with 10 kills, 11 digs, five blocks and four aces for Waynesburg.
“Harper Grimes made a big difference serving and hitting, but we spread it around,” said Higinbotham whose team improved its overall record to 20-1. “The girls worked very well together.”
Chatham Knight rang up 37 assists — including the 1,000th of her career — to go along with 10 digs and two kills.
Waynesburg also got 14 kills, 16 digs and three aces from Railey Bochna, 10 kills, six digs, two assists and two aces from Emily Rafferty, 21 digs and six aces from Lelia McCollum, eight kills, three blocks, three aces and three digs from Emma Blair, and two digs from Julia Fisher.
The long trip was made much more palatable as the Raiders left a day early.
“It was about a 2 1/2-hour trip. We were very fortunate because the school sent us out the night before on Monday and put us up overnight,” Higinbotham pointed out. “That made it a real relaxing, fun time for the kids, very memorable. We stayed in a hotel and got up the next, went into Bedford, walked around, went into a candy store and some shops, did a little craft, relaxed for a couple hours.
“Then we went and played some volleyball.”
The first set was a tight battle in which the Lions built an early lead then held off a Raiders rally.
“We dug ourselves a real deep hole at the beginning of the first set,” Higinbotham pointed out. “A couple missed serves, a couple balls hit out of bounds. We were down by about nine. We dug ourselves out pretty good and got it back to deuce.
“I thought we might be able to steal that first one and that would set us up well, but we were not able to pull it out.”
While falling in such a close set on the road in the PIAA playoffs might mentally drain most teams, the Raiders rebounded strongly.
That didn’t surprise Higinbotham.
“We haven’t lost a lot of sets this year, but every time we have, we’ve responded well,” he said. “As they’ve done all year, they put that behind them and responded in a positive way. It was tough. The next two sets were neck and neck. We fell in a hole in the second set, too, but dug out and won that one, and the next one.”
After the Raiders seized a 2-1 lead they put the Lions away convincingly.
“In the fourth set they really turned it up a notch with our serving and kept them down, and out of system,” said Higinbotham, who cited a couple players as leaders who keep his team in the right frame of mind.
“If I had to put one person as mentally staying into every match, Emily Rafferty is that person, her and also Lelia McCollum. They both keep everybody grounded and moving forward.”
Higinbotham noted the many Raiders fans who made the trip to give his players a boost.
“I felt we had almost as many fans as they did,” Higinbotham said. “They had a few more but we had a very nice turnout. It was very impressive. Our fans have followed us well and it’s very much appreciated.”
After the match, Higinbotham let his players know what they accomplished.
“I said congratulations on making school history,” Higinbotham said, “and they went nuts.”
Waynesburg went through the regular season unbeaten for the second consecutive season in claiming the Section 4-3A championship and defeated Quaker Valley, 3-0, and South Allegheny, 3-1, in the WPIAL playoffs before falling to Avonworth in the semifinals, 3-1.
The Raiders defeated Seton LaSalle, 3-1, in the third-place consolation match.