Lions’ difficult schedule sets up strong end to season

Their schedule prepared them well, as the Lions used a late season surge to advance to the AHSAA State Volleyball Championships in late October.

In the state tournament quarterfinal round, the Briarwood Christian School volleyball team faced a tough Lawrence County team and fell, 3-0 (20-25, 21-25, 23-25), at the Birmingham CrossPlex.

“The girls played hard,” head coach Jeff Robertson said. “They fought, competed every point. I was very proud of their fight and determination. We competed very well against a very good Lawrence County team. Today, they were the better team. That’s how it goes.”

Briarwood won the Class 5A, Area 8 tournament by sweeping Moody and defeating Shelby County in four sets. That performance propelled them to the Class 5A Super Regionals, where the Lions won a pair of matches to seal its spot in Birmingham.

At super regionals, they earned a four-set win over Carroll-Ozark, followed up with a sweep of Dallas County to clinch their first state tournament berth since 2011. 

Despite concluding with a 19-23 overall record, the Lions played just eight regular season matches against 5A competition, electing to face several 6A and 7A squads in preparation for the level of play in the postseason tournaments.

“We knew our level of competition that we’d been playing was going to prepare us for a run in the postseason,” Robertson said. “They bought into that process, and it showed in the long run.”

Partly due to that stiff competition, Briarwood went on an 11-match losing streak late in the season, but did not display the normal attitudes of a team in that situation. That’s because there’s a larger goal than the individual match results.

“The process for us has been just every game, are we improving? As a team and individually. It really has encouraged us a ton this year. When we lose a game, it is a process to getting better and to getting to the ultimate goal of getting to the Elite Eight,” said senior Alex O’Brien.

Robertson is in his 11th year at Briarwood, but he just completed his first as head coach. He said he is hoping to build upon the foundation set by coaches of years past, with the Lions winning seven Class 3A state titles in the 1990s.

Briarwood bids farewell to two seniors in O’Brien and Natalie Crumpler, and will welcome back an experienced team next fall.