Goldsboro volleyball has best season in school history

By Allen Etzler
Published in Sports on October 23, 2014 1:46 PM

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aetzler@newsargus.com

When TJ Lancaster took over the volleyball coaching duties at Goldsboro High School in 2008 he knew it was going to be a long process.

The girls didn't even know how to pass to one another, he said.

"It was just one hit and over the net," he adds.

But seven years later, they are no longer playing free ball-style volleyball. This season things finally started to come together as he imagined.

Goldsboro supplanted itself as the best team in school history with 12 wins this season. No other Goldsboro team has ever won 10 games. The Cougars made the N.C. High School Athletic Association 1-A playoffs in 2011, but only won nine games.

They took steps backwards in the following seasons.

"The last two years we weren't as good as we could have been," senior Alexus Davis said. "But this year all the girls have worked hard and we've come together and we've just played really well. It's been great."

Davis and Maddie Jara served as the team leaders this season.

They were supported by a group of solid young players who have developed through club volleyball. When Lancaster took the job, none of the girls had even played regular volleyball, much less participated on the club level.

Now most of them do. The sophomore supporting cast of Matti Rose Lyon, Becka Pittard and Angelina Nacca all have been progressing through club volleyball.

There's no secret formula to the team's success this year.

Lancaster didn't read a book.

There were no magic beanstalk beans that made his team better over night.

"These girls have put in the hours, it's real simple," Lancaster said. "They've gotten better through playing club in recent years and now they're reaping the rewards from it."

Built from the middle this season, Davis and Pittard combined for 351 kills, 234 digs and 74 blocks this season. Lyon racked up 191 assists, while Nacca contributed 107.

Jara, the team's libero, led the defensive effort with 128 digs.

Defense has been the area the Lancaster says needs to improve the most if the team is going to continue to get better in the coming seasons. Though the Cougars' did defense came up big in two conference matches against Kinston and Ayden-Grifton toward the end of the season. They averaged double-digit digs per set for the first and second time all season.

Lancaster admits a lot of what he learned came from his cousin, Princeton volleyball coach Paige Renfrow, who he lived with in college at ECU. But he's yet to quite master what Renfrow does with her teams defensively.

"You'd never know with her being such a good offensive player when she played, but she's one of the best defensive coaches I've ever seen," Lancaster said. "That's one of the things I'm going to have to pick her brain about at the next family get-together."