With winning streaks, regular-season success, and district and region accolades, the Chattanooga area has already made a strong case this fall for its status as a prep volleyball hotbed in Tennessee.
The strongest piece of evidence yet will be there for the taking Friday in Murfreesboro.
All three of the day’s TSSAA volleyball state title matches at Siegel High School will feature a Chattanooga-area team, and Cleveland, Sale Creek and Signal Mountain will have an opportunity at an unprecedented accomplishment. If they can sweep the Class A, AA and AAA finals, they would become the first local volleyball trio to win state titles in the same season.
Only twice has the area delivered a pair of state volleyball champions in the same year: Class AAA’s East Ridge and Division II’s Baylor were the first in 1997, and Class A’s Boyd Buchanan and Class AA’s Red Bank replicated the feat in 2009. The TSSAA volleyball championships date to 1976, when Chattanooga Kirkman began a run of five straight titles with a 171-5 overall record in that span.
First up Friday at Siegel is Class A’s Sale Creek (49-2), which plays at 11 a.m. Eastern in a winner-take-all, best-of-five final against Loretto (46-8), which lost in four sets to the Lady Panthers on Wednesday but won three times in the elimination bracket to secure a rematch.