Arguably nobody in the CSRA, and not many in all of Georgia, is playing volleyball at the level the Lakeside Panthers are playing right now. And yet, when you talk with head coach Scott Newland, you get the feeling that it’s still not enough.
Before playing in a loaded non-region tournament this past Saturday against metro Atlanta powerhouse programs Alpharetta and Johns Creek and Baylor School out of Tennessee, Lakeside (32-3, 6-0 in Area 2-AAAAAA) had lost just one match this season. That happened on Sept. 14 against Oconee County.
The Panthers went 1-2 in Saturday’s tournament action. But the way they’ve dominated the majority of their competition has coach Newland feeling good about his squad’s potential to make a deep state tournament run with just a handful of regular season matches remaining.
“We’ve got a great corps that really work well together,” Newland said. “We’re led by five seniors that really set the pace for everybody. They’re holding everybody accountable and energizing themselves. They’re working really hard together getting the job done.”
Those five seniors are Lylah Glover, Myah Obleton, Caroline Miller, Kendall Lanclos and Lucia Curkovic. They are the battle-tested ones who have formed the nucleus of a team that has improved leaps and bounds over last year’s bunch that finished 23-16 overall and a second round finish in the Class AAAAAA state tournament.
To put into perspective how much more improved this year’s Lakeside team is, consider this: The 2022 Panthers didn’t reach their 23rd win until an Oct. 19 state tournament game against Lee County. This year’s team matched last year’s win total in the first week of September.
And they’ve looked dominant doing it — so much so that Newland believes this team is on the cusp of true rarified air as far as the state’s volleyball scene goes.
“We do have state potential,” Newland said after his team notched a doubleheader sweep of Statesboro and Grovetown last Thursday. “It all depends on how far we can go, but as hard as they’re working right now and as tight as they are and as well as their supporting each other — and I’m talking about everyone down to the game changers on the bench — if they keep doing what they’re doing, their ceiling is very, very high.”
That’s why this past weekend playing against tougher competition than what’s typically seen in area play has been a welcomed challenge. The Panthers have dominated area play, not just this season, but for the past few years. In fact, you’d have to go back to Lakeside’s Sept. 24, 2019 match with Greenbrier to find the last time the Panthers lost to an area foe in regular season play.
Last week’s 2-0 match sweep against Grovetown completed the third straight undefeated mark in regular season area play. Competing against 2020 Class AAAAAAA state champion Alpharetta, Baylor (TN) and Johns Creek this past Saturday helped Lakeside see where it can stand to improve with postseason play beginning in just a couple of weeks.
Newland seems most impressed with how his offense has improved over the season. He credits Obleton, the team’s setter, as the one whom the offense runs through. With 708 assists — an average of nine assists per set — she is the team’s leading ball handler by far.
Lanclos, a 5-foot-11 senior outside hitter leads the team with 351 kills with Blakely Johnson, a 6-foot junior, not too far behind with 244 kills of her own. But the team’s interior has shown remarkable improvement as well.
“We’re definitely balanced in the front row with our pin hitters, and now our middles are developing with Nyla Smith and Lylah Glover,” Newland said. “And, of course, our passing by MiMi Fincher and Caroline Miller is just setting the pace for us to get the offense going.”
Lakeside won’t see another area foe until the area tournament which is slated to begin Saturday Oct. 14. But the team will have its mettle tested again, starting Wednesday with a non-area match against South Aiken (29-1). South Aiken’s only loss of the season so far has come against Lakeside, and the Thoroughbreds played the Panthers arguably as tough as anyone this season.
They’ll also draw Alleluia Community, another top team in the CSRA, as a non-area tune up before finishing the regular season with matches against Greenbrier and North Augusta.
Newland says that the familiarity of these late-season foes presents a different challenge than it did at the beginning of the year. But it’s one he wants his team to embrace as it
“We’ve got to keep challenging ourselves to get better. We can’t become complacent,” Newline said. “We’ve gotta keep challenging ourselves to try new things. We can’t get vanilla. At this point in the season, everybody’s got tape on each other, so they’re looking for tendencies just like we look for tendencies. So we’ve gotta look for some different ways to score, even if it’s different plays, different formations. At this point in the season, we just have to keep challenging ourselves to not just stay the same.”
