By Solomon Crenshaw Jr.
Lulu Bateh made two unreturnable serves during Mountain Brook’s championship match with Saraland on Nov. 1 in Bill Harris Arena at the Birmingham CrossPlex.
But it’s the second one that will live in Mountain Brook lore.
When Saraland couldn’t return Bateh’s delivery, Mountain Brook claimed its seventh state volleyball championship since 2014. With its fans literally behind them in the north end zone, Mountain Brook beat Saraland 25-15, 25-14, 26-28, 25-15 for the Class 6A championship.
With that shank return, the skirmish between Spartans was complete. Mountain Brook players (46-5) stormed the court and piled on one another in glee.
Saraland (40-8) had claimed some momentum, taking the third set on its sixth set point. Coach Mattie Gardner had told her Mountain Brook squad that Saraland wouldn’t back down, that they are used to battling through fifth-set matches.
But, Gardner said, her team was up to the challenge.
“I told the girls, you’re the one that should be unencumbered,” she said. “We are flowing. You guys are trusting each other. You’re having fun out there. Just enjoy this ride and take it forward.”
Alice Garzon, one of six seniors on the team, remembered her coaching, saying that the squad was “forged by fire.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Garzon said, presuming that it meant that they had been tested by fire. “We knew we had experienced a set like that where we came back or we lost the third set and then we had to come back extra strong.”
Going into the fourth set, Garzon said, “we basically had the upper hand and we needed to use it again to our advantage to beat them.”
Ron Ingram, director of communications for the Alabama High School Athletic Association, explained that the strongest sword is forged by fire. Mountain Brook proved its mettle against the inferno of Bayside Academy in a semifinal of the Elite Eight.
The current Admirals had never in their lives known a season that didn’t end with a Bayside state championship. Bayside had won a national record 21 straight state titles before Mountain Brook ended that streak with a 15-13 match-deciding fifth set on Halloween.
“We slayed the giant at that semifinal match,” Gardner said. “Sometimes a team … can kind of come in complacent after that. But our girls, they do their best when they’re low stress and high comfort.”
The match with Bayside was as much mental as it was physical. It was the rubber match between the two teams, and Mountain Brook had to fend off feelings that what had happened 21 years in a row – including when Bayside beat them in the Elite Eight semifinals last season – would happen again.
But there was no anxiety going into a final against Saraland, a team Mountain Brook would face for the first time.
“My girls, they work best when they just go out and play and there’s not that mental foothold that a team might have on them,” Gardner said. “They were able to come in just ready, ready to take it.”
Garzon paced the Mountain Brook attack with 15 kills. Hannah Parant had 35 assists, 10 digs and 10 kills, while Annie Lacey had 10 kills. Ella Kate Wright had 26 digs, Paige Parant had 11 digs and Mae Mae Beatty, 10.
Beatty and Lacey were in on six blocks apiece. Saraland got 10 kills from Hannah Pearce and 30 assists from Sophia Saxon. Bre Hughes paced the Spartans from Mobile Bay with 15 digs.
Hannah Parant was named the most valuable player of the Class 6A Elite Eight. She was joined on the all-tournament team by teammates Garzon and Wright, and Saraland’s Charli Pearce, Hannah Pearce and Hughes.
“It means so much because of these girls,” Gardner said of the half dozen players who flanked her as she faced media after the final match. “We have six seniors, 14 total (players) on the team. I normally never carry that many girls, but I chose those 14 on purpose. They each contribute something to our success, and they are 100% bought in since we started all the way on Aug. 1 and we’re finishing it in a storybook manner.”
