TCC volleyball squad enjoys magical ride to state final four

Central Catholic’s volleyball season ended right about where and when it should have – unless you asked Saints coach Kristen Trivoli back in August.

“This was not on my radar at all,” Trivoli said of her team’s finish in the Division VII state final four. “I think it was our fourth match, our senior outside hitter (Stella Everett) went down with a torn ACL. After that I had two liberos playing outsides. They’re not really hitters, they’re defensive players.”

Then there was the district tournament, which Trivoli said presented a more difficult challenge than the regional that followed.

“Our district is actually really hard with Connoton Valley and Strasburg,” the coach said. “I’m not sure I really envisioned getting past district finals. My girls came in the night before the tournament started and we talked about what’s the goal. The goal for them was state. I said, ‘If you guys work hard, you guys can do anything you want to do.’ And they did. It was like a Cinderella story and Christmas run together.”

The Cinderella half of that had the clock strike midnight in the state semis against a Tiffin Calvert team that was not going to lose to the Saints, or anyone else in Division VII for that matter, at any time or any place.

In a state semi at Vandalia Butler High School, Central Catholic got overwhelmed a bit. The Senecas stopped the Saints’ run with a 25-7, 25-13, 25-11 win. Central fans had barely taken their seats and the match was over.

In the three sets, the Saints recorded just eight kills. Total. In a typical match, multiple individuals would have had that many. Stellar senior Khloe Trivoli had half of those kills. It just wasn’t going to be Central’s night.

But just for a bit of perspective, the Senecas went on to face Monroeville in the state final and won by a very similar score of 25-13, 25-9, 25-11 to finish off a 29-0 season.

“The team they played after us only scored two more points collectively than we did,” Trivoli said. “That says something to them.”

Trivoli said her players were more disappointed that their season had ended than the fact that they lost a state semifinal. The end of the season was the end of a career for seven of them.

The Saints’ senior class came up together, starting as fourth graders right around the time Trivoli became the varsity head coach.

The program is now built to regenerate. Trivoli said strong classes of players exist throughout the program and that an incoming group of freshmen will fill in nicely for the graduating seniors. She went on to reel off facts about the current sophomores, seventh- and eighth-grade teams and the contributions they will make.

Sometimes a run like the Saints had motivates the next groups of players to want to duplicate that success. It takes special groups, though, and TCC had one this year.

Others will follow, though, and when it comes to achieving a certain level of success or not, Trivoli goes back to the same mantra she shared with her current squad at the district tourney.

“I tell them that all the time,” she said. “You can do anything you want.”