SACCO: Tears and cheers

FISHERSVILLE
Go ahead and call them tears if you wish.

We’re going to call them what they really were Friday in Wilson Memorial’s gym: Five years of almost-hads and oh-so-closes streaming down Green Hornet coach Kim Claytor’s cheeks.

There she was, the most unlikeliest of criers, corralling her swarm of volleyball players around her and bouncing with excitement. Wilson’s rock-solid, NASCAR-watching, yellow-card getting, cell-phone snagging coach with those frustrations welling in her eyes, trying her best to hug every one of them.

“Guess what?” she said in that raspy voice that is much a part of that gym as the beefed-up hornet that adorns a wall. “We’re going to states.”

The girls cheered, jumped up and down and hurried back to their locker room. Paying no mind to a Nelson County team that gave them all they could handle in four games and not shooting a glance toward the fans that poured from the bleachers onto the floor to meet them.

The Green Hornets just ran and ran, leaving Claytor standing on the court by herself for a split second.

There, she wiped he eyes, rubbed her red cheeks and slowly followed them back for a quick pep-talk and a congrats.

Finally, she emerged from the locker room and found time to sigh, relax and smile. Finally, her Green Hornets are going to the Group A tournament.

“The most awesome thing to see with these eyes [is] this group of kids,” she said, making sure everybody noticed those eyes were now dry. “I’m blessed.”

True that, coach.

She’s been blessed with one of the most electrifying volleyball players this area’s seen in quite some time — Kala Guy. A player with the ability to take over a match and watch as her teammates jump in to join the fray.

They joined in Thursday and, while Guy was once again the standout, girls like Tiffany Crosby, Noël Bartley and Taijha Jones proved that volleyball is nothing with just one player. Guy wouldn’t have it any other way.

“We get each other up,” she said. “We feed off each other a lot.”

When Wilson needed a point, Guy gave it a point. When the Hornets needed an ace, Guy gave them an ace. And when it wasn’t Guy doing it, it was someone else doing their job against a Governors team that featured libero Brittany Crawford and her rabbit-out-of-a-hat ability to scoop up digs.

So excuse Claytor if she shed a few tears. And excuse Guy if she could only muster a few usable quotes after all the excitement.

“It’s the best feeling I’ve had in a while,” she said. “To know we’re going where we’re going …”

The only doubt will be how this team can handle itself in a pressure-cooker state tournament — something new to this group of girls.

But that’s a worry for after Saturday’s Region B title match against Strasburg.

“We’re going to Richmond,” someone yelled out of the locker room. Claytor was quick to correct them.

“We have to win the quarterfinal first,” she said. “And that’s at TBD — to be determined.”

Told you they were new to this. They’ll get it soon enough. Just look how far they’ve gotten already.