For much of Thursday’s Tennessee-Georgia high school all-star volleyball match at GPS, the Tennessee girls looked like a collection of talent. Eventually a true “team player” helped turned them from just players into a team.
After Georgia won the first two games, Red Bank’s Courtney Lawson elevated her game, which in turn elevated her team, and the Tennessee all-stars rallied for a 3-2 victory. The game scores were 21-25, 20-25, 25-22, 25-19, 15-11, and Lawson was selected most valuable player.
The match was the seventh in the yearly series, all won by Tennessee. The first was the only other to go five games.
“We weren’t clicking,” Lawson said of her team’s slow start. “Our own mistakes were giving them too many points. We weren’t relaxing. It took us a while to jell.”
The Tennessee team, which blew a 15-8 lead in the second game, went ahead for good in the third game when Kat Knarr, a David Brainerd transfer who finished her career at GPS, broke a tie at 21 with an ace. Lawson had kills for the 23rd and 25th points. She ended up with 13, which isn’t too bad for someone predetermined to be a setter at Carson-Newman.