Whoa, baby! AGWSR coach announces pregnancy before Cougars rally

CLARKSVILLE – AGWSR co-head coach Stacy Drake had double the reason for celebrating on Tuesday, Oct. 16.
 
The day she announced to everyone her first pregnancy, her volleyball team rallied from a 2-0 set deficit against Clarksville to win the Class 1A Region 4 opener at Clarksville, 3-2.
 
“It’s been an interesting day,” Drake said. “I announced that I’m pregnant, I think the girls used that excitement a little bit, too, throughout the day.”
 
The Indians led in the opener 24-18 and nearly let that win slip away before taking it by a 26-24 score. An ace serve by Makenzie Bloker in the second completed the Clarksville comeback in the second set in which the home team trailed 21-16 for the 25-23 final before AGWSR came back with 25-20, 25-21, 15-11 wins to end it.
 
During the course of the match, four different Cougar hitters tallied double-digit kills with a match-high 15 from Taylor Sperfslage and three with 11 each: Taryan Barrick, Alyssa Hames and Alayna Hunt.
 
“We told them pretty much that if you didn’t want your season to be done in the next 25 points, then you probably should take care of the ball,” Drake said. “That was our main thing that whole time, but a lot of the points that they were scoring was us hitting it out of the court, hitting it into the net or double hits or random different things like that…then finally they came together and were able to get themselves out of that mess. As long as they took care of the ball, we were able to take it from them.”
 
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The ‘reward’ for AGWSR’s win is a quarterfinal match at Janesville against top-ranked and four-time defending Class 1A champion Janesville, whose head coach was scouting the match.
 
“You work on Bree Thompson and you never know,” Drake said. “Cinderella stories happen in the world. They are a very structured team, a very good team.
 
“We’re going to be working on a lot of blocking for sure and a lot of digging, big-time. Janesville can jump, they have a lot of good hitters who know where to put it, so we’re going to move our feet a lot. We’ll try to make it the best game as possible.”
 
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