e Howard volleyball team came into the final game of the regular season against Centennial Thursday night with a lot of emotions.

It was senior night for a group that had gone 31-5 in county play since the beginning of the 2014 season, but more importantly the Lions knew a victory would earn them a share of the county title with Mt. Hebron.

But in the span of half an hour, Howard suddenly found itself in a 0-2 hole facing a sweep at the hands of one of its rivals.

“I think we started out pretty nervous knowing this was a huge game for us,” said Howard junior Christina Kundrat, who had five kills and three blocks. “But after we got into it and we got our rhythm down we brought our energy and played like we always play and we just came back.”

In the end, the Lions (10-1 county, 12-2 overall) just wouldn’t be denied. They climbed out of the hole to win the final three sets and beat Centennial (8-3, 10-4), 24-26, 19-25, 25-18, 25-14, 15-10, to win a share of its first league title since winning it outright in 2013.

“It feels great,” said Howard coach Grant Scott. “Hebron is a great team and I’m proud of the way we’ve come back in the last three games after losing to Reservoir, so I couldn’t be happier for these girls. They deserve everything they get.”

Said senior Sarah Sweet, who led the team with 23 kills, of what led the turnaround: “I think for myself, I realized this is it, and I think the seniors realized that, too. We either push now or we don’t push at all, and this is the end of our season and the end of our high school career, so I think everyone just realized that if we play our game we’re going to win.”

With their backs against the wall, the Lions put it all on the line in the third set. Tied at 7, they went on an 8-2 run to take a 15-9 lead en route to winning the set behind four kills from senior Sara Binkley (11 kills, 4 blocks) and consistent serving from Madison Paige (14 kills).

Scott said that run changed the momentum of the match and gave his team the energy and confidence to complete the comeback.

“When you start to get that energy, you start feeding off it, and so your play gets stronger and stronger and stronger," he said. "We kind of pride ourselves on making the other team call a timeout on our server, so when they called a timeout [at 13-9] we got a little more excited. It’s just an energy thing.

“Winning the third game is when we actually realized we can win this thing. The comeback in the third game was all it took.”

In the fourth set, Howard went to its most consistent and powerful hitter in Sweet and rode another string of reliable serves from Paige, who was behind the line for an 11-0 run that turned a two-point deficit into a 21-12 lead. Sweet knocked down 10 kills in the stanza, including four in its final six points, to force the deciding set.

“Games three and four ... they played some really good volleyball and made an adjustment here or there,” said Centennial coach Michael Bossom. “We found it more and more difficult to score points and then we got tentative and they started playing even better defense. I credit them for taking us out of what we wanted to do in those two games.”

Teams often take pride in being the first to win points five and 10 in the fifth set, and Howard did just that. It went on a 4-0 run to take a 6-3 advantage, and after the Eagles tied things at 6 after a pair of kills from Rachel Mathew (22 kills), the Lions got a kill from Anna Jezerski and a pair of aces from Sweet to take the lead for good. Paige hammered two more kills, Binkley had another and then Kundrat put down the match-winning kill.

“That kill meant the world to us,” Kundrat said. “We have worked so hard this season and coach Scott said from the beginning that this is a special group, and he knew we could do something special. Last year we had it taken away from us so this year we proved to everyone that we can still do it.”

Most of the county will compete against each other in the 3A East regional playoffs, but the Lions’ road to a state championship runs through the 4A North region. Howard fell in the regional final a year ago.

Centennial, meanwhile, which had a six-game winning streak snapped, will likely be the No. 2 or 3 seed in their section behind Mt. Hebron and possibly Wilde Lake. Bossom said he liked what he saw from his team in the first two sets, adding his team played some of its best volleyball of the season in the second set, which saw 18 total kills from the Eagles.

“I think they showed us some things that we need to improve on,” Bossom said. “That was part of our conversation afterwards – what are we going to work on? ... We have four or five days of practice before our next competition and we’ll figure out who we play Monday and we’ll move forward from there.”

Photo Credits: Tim Schwartz