By Loyd McIntosh photos by Jordan Wald
It was a season of streaky ups and downs; however, the Homewood volleyball team got hot at the right moment and rode that momentum to the Elite Eight in the Alabama High School Athletic Association state volleyball tournament.
Under second-year head coach Grace Burgess, the Patriots jumped out to a solid start, winning their first five games and sporting an 8-5 record by the end of August. However, a difficult slate of teams faced Homewood in September as the teams struggled to find their rhythm and identity.
They dropped eight of nine games during the meat of their schedule, including five games in a row. They managed to survive this rough patch, despite coming up short against some of the best teams in the state, including 7A Spain Park and Auburn and fellow 6A powerhouses Spanish Fort and Buckhorn.
However, instead of collapsing, the Patriots found their rhythm and absolutely caught fire in October. They won nine straight games and went 10-3 overall, and, during the run, defeated such teams as 7A Area 6 champion Hoover and went undefeated in 6A Area 9 play.
Battle-tested and gelling at the right moment, Burgess says the team began to understand how to play together as the season rolled along. The 2025 Patriots replaced nine seniors from last year’s squad but had seven seniors providing veteran stability and a group of talented underclassmen hungry to prove themselves. “They just kept doing it, and the best part about it was when we went to the postseason, when we were at the regional tournament, we were genuinely playing the best volleyball we had played all year,” says Burgess. “That’s what coaches want. They want to peak at the right time, they want to be playing the best volleyball at the right time. This group figured it out, and they did that.”
Burgess highlights the consistently high level of seniors Mary Ellis Jarmon and Sarah Johnson, as well as juniors Addison Wood and Kamryn Coleman, but notes that no one player emerged as the true leader. Instead, she says the team’s chemistry, talent and desire to play for each other created the momentum as the area champs rambled into the postseason. “At different times of the year, different players led and stepped up,” Burgess says.
In the AHSAA Super Regional Volleyball Championships, Homewood defeated Decatur in the opening round, 3-0. In the quarterfinals, they beat Southside, 3-0, and moved on to defeat Oxford in the semifinals, 3-1, qualifying for the Elite 8. They lost to Hazel Green in the Super Regional Championships, earning the Number 2 seed in the Elite 8. The season came to an end on October 28 with a 3-0 loss to Saraland in the state tournament.
While it was exciting to see the squad experiencing success, especially in the postseason, Burgess says it was important to keep the team focused on improving rather than focusing on titles, records or other achievements. Instead, the focus was on improvement as players and as a team and avoiding the self-imposed pressure of bringing home some hardware.
“The goal wasn’t to win a state championship. We didn’t even really talk about those things,” Burgess says. “We just talked about getting better every day, trusting the process and understanding that some days we’re going to be a lot uglier than others, and we were going to get up the next day and get back to work, and they really kind of bought into that.”
Burgess closes, “I’m so proud of them. I think we had a really good combination of kids, and it worked out for us in the end, for sure.”
