Eight years after making its first state appearance and winning its first championship, Bishop Fenwick added state championship No. 2 to the trophy case.
After that long, waiting for a few extra points was no problem.
Sitting at match point with a 24-12 score, Fenwick's opponent, Olentangy, started a run.
At 24-15, the Falcons put down the ball in Olentangy's side and the celebration started with hugging coaches and dogpiling on the court.
Instead, the officials called a foul on Fenwick, making the point Olentangy's.
The next serve went into the net, giving Fenwick a straight win 25-22, 25-18, 25-16 and a celebration a referee's whistle didn't end.
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Down 2-1 early in the deciding third set, first-team all-Ohio player Will Richards sent off four-straight service aces and had one more as Fenwick took an 8-2 lead.
"There are few environments like that in a state championship game," Richards said. "It's crazy and all the fans are yelling, but you just need to lock in as a server and not focus on not missing, but doing your best serve.
"I was putting it where I needed to and how I needed to and I was feeling it serving the ball."
Richards had five aces in the third set and nine aces overall along with 14 kills, 11 digs and a pair of blocks. Division II player of the year John Luers had 26 assists and six kills for Fenwick.
"Will is pretty even-keeled," Fenwick assistant coach Tina Gustely said. "He doesn't have a lot of highs and he doesn't have a lot of lows so he's a perfect guy in that scenario."
Before a decisive third-set win, Olentangy had run with Fenwick in the first two sets before the Falcons pulled away to win. Gustely didn't call a timeout the entire match, instead opting to let the players battle through each game.
"I'm very conservative with (timeouts)," Gustely said. "We don't use them unless we have to. Our goal is to get them to problem solve on the court and they did a great job of that this year."
Following the victory and locker room celebrations, the Falcons traveled through a tunnel of Fenwick's faithful fans, with head coach Pete Ehrlich trailing at the end, state championship trophy held securely in his grasp among cheers of "Play for Pete" and then "Repeat for Pete."
Gustely coached the Xs and Os, but Ehrlich, who was diagnosed with ALS that has made him travel in a chair, was on the sidelines coaching in a different way.
"The things he talks to the boys about are really life lessons," Gustely said. "They're going to face adversity in their life. He's handling it with amazing grace and it's a wonderful example to the boys on how to handle adversity."
"Two years ago when I was a sophomore, we thought we had a really good team and we went to the regional finals and we lost to Alter" Richards said. "At that point, he had been diagnosed with ALS. We thought we let him down. We didn't know if he could coach again, but this year he's come back. Fought his own battle, but he's still shown up at practice.
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