Briarwood sweeps area tournament to reach super regionals for fourth-straight year
Published 11:07 pm Tuesday, October 14, 2025
Briarwood won its second-straight area championship with back-to-back sweeps over Central-Clay County and Sylacauga, putting the No. 1-ranked Lions back in super regionals for the fourth-straight year. (For the Reporter/Dawn Harrison)
|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports Editor
NORTH SHELBY – The Briarwood Christian Lions entered the Class 5A playoffs as the No. 1 team in the classification, but they knew coming into the day that it meant nothing if they didn’t get past the tests in front of them.
Faced with a do-or-die match in the area semifinals, Briarwood picked up right where it left off in the regular season, earning sweeps No. 4 and No. 5 against the Central Volunteers of Clay County and the Sylacauga Aggies on Tuesday, Oct. 14 at Briarwood Christian School.
With those, the Lions punched their ticket to their fourth-straight South Super Regionals, for the second-straight time as Class 5A, Area 8 champions, and this time, without dropping a set in five area matches.
“Just proud of the girls,” Briarwood coach Chris Camper said. “They came in very focused tonight, start of the night, and they know the new season starts. Nothing matters up to today, and from here on out, it’s all about, ‘How much better have you gotten during the season, and can you stick together as a team, overcome the adversity that comes with the playoffs?’ So we’ve got a lot of matches we got to win to get where we want to get to.”
In the first match against Central-Clay County, Briarwood had a single-digit lead at the midway point but quickly grew it into a commanding one. Stella Woods secured two aces on the serve to push the Lions to an 18-7 lead.
Service errors prevented the Lions from wrapping up the set sooner, but Briarwood worked quickly on the side out to regain control and put it away. The Lions secured the 25-10 first-set win off a Peyton Gibbons ace.
Briarwood went on a tear to start the second set as Leighton Hendley got a kill to kick off a 9-0 run. Noelle Suellentrop was the driving force with four aces of her nine points at the service line.
The Lions continued rolling over the course of the set, extending the lead to 21-3. The hosts were largely comfortable in the set and conceded most of their points off service errors, but Stella Woods got a dramatic diving dig for the 13-1 lead. The teams traded serve down the stretch before Briarwood ended the 25-6 win at the net with a kill.
The third set was the most competitive of the entire match. After Hendley got three aces in an 8-2 run, Central raced back into the match and cut the lead to 11-8. The Vols continued to hang close at 14-10 before a Lainey Woods-led 5-0 run put Briarwood up 19-10.
That proved to be the dagger as the Lions sealed the sweep with a Gibbons kill for the 25-13 victory.
After Sylacauga swept Shelby County 3-0 to reach the finals, Briarwood pulled away in the first set with a 12-1 run to open the match. Leighton Hendley was just one of multiple key contributors thanks to multiple aces and a strong kill early on.
A misplaced pass gave the Aggies the serve, and Sylacauga took advantage by winning three-straight points. An ace capped the short run to make it 12-4, but Clara Crawford grabbed a block to end the threat.
Briarwood’s front row continued to dominate down the stretch as the Lions ended the set on a 12-3 run. That included the last four points as Hendley secured a side out kill to spark the closing rally, and she ended the 25-7 win with another kill following one of the longest rallies of the first set.
Much like the opening frame, the Lions raced ahead in the second set with a 7-0 run to start, but the Aggies made it a close affair coming out of a timeout. Sylacauga cut the gap to 11-7 before Briarwood took back over.
The Lions resumed their dominant form as Roberts and Lainey Woods controlled the service line. Roberts landed back-to-back aces during her stint, and Lainey Woods one-upped her with three-consecutive aces.
Briarwood went up 22-8, but while most of their previous runs ended with service errors, Sylacauga strung together more points in the final stretch. The Aggies briefly drew within 10 as the Lions misplaced a few balls, but Sylacauga hit one out of bounds to give Briarwood the 25-14 second-set win and 2-0 match lead.
The third set was a back-and-forth battle to start. After the Lions went up 3-0 to begin, the Aggies didn’t let Briarwood get more than a couple of points in front. Up 8-6, the Lions grabbed hold of the momentum and forced a timeout with a Coley Barnes block for the 10-6 lead.
Briarwood kept rolling out of the timeout as Roberts took the lead to 13-6. However, Sylacauga then won three out of the next four points to draw back within four.
That’s when the Lions made their move. A 6-0 run put the hosts in front 20-10 and effectively iced the game. Even though the Aggies went on two short runs to win five more points, Briarwood sealed the sweep and 25-15 win with a Hendley ace to clinch the championship.
Across the two matches, Suellentrop had 39 assists, 11 aces and eight digs while Roberts earned nine kills and 11 digs and Crawford had 15 kills and four total blocks. Hendley led the offense with 17 digs while also securing a team-high 12 aces, and Lainey Woods had eight aces and six digs on the evening.
It wasn’t all positives on the night as Gibbons exited in the first set against Sylacauga after an awkward landing from a block and did not return. With injuries starting to stack up, Camper hopes to use the next eight days to get his players right and finetune the areas they need to advance.
“We’ve got to figure out the lineup, get kids back in the lineup, and figure out what we’re going to do when we get down there,” Camper said. “So, it’s all details. Just focus on the little things, and that’s what we’ll do over the next couple of days.”
Briarwood is now 34-6 heading into the Class 5A South Super Regionals, where it will face the Area 2 runner-up on Wednesday, Oct. 22 at 2 p.m. at the Cramton Bowl Multiplex. A win will put them into a playoff match later that day for a spot in the Elite Eight.
Camper believes that momentum is on his team’s side after sweeping the area and overcoming a difficult schedule. He hopes said momentum can carry them deeper than Briarwood has been in years.
“(Volleyball’s) such a huge momentum sport,” Camper said. “I think the girls feel good about the way we’re playing. And, we’ve been to Montgomery before, but this program, it’s been a while since they’ve won two games down there and gotten to the Elite Eight. So the girls are excited. They know they’ve got two tough matches, and I think momentum’s the biggest thing we can take from them.”
More Briarwood
-
-
-
Polls
Loading ...
