Last Thursday, amid all the ruckus during a fifth set of a two-hour thriller that was the TSSAA District 6-AA volleyball championship match, Hixson coach Janet Tate sat on the far end of her team’s bench observing. She looked calm, resting her chin in her hand.
“I was tough in those early years,” said Tate, whose school administrators have known from the beginning of the season she would be resigning effective at the end of the Lady Wildcats’ season. “I had them running the bleachers, running to the school and all the way back. I’ve mellowed, which is a good thing. I can still get after it when I need to. East Hamilton was a beautiful match.”
And this coming from the coach whose team was on the losing end. Each team totaled 104 points. The Lady Hurricanes had a few more in the right place.
Both teams have moved on to the Region 3 tournament, which starts Monday at Kingston. Semifinals are elimination matches. Region finalists move on to Thursday’s state sectionals, which Hixson has reached each of the last three years, including winning in 2015 and gaining the program’s first state-tournament berth.
“Kingston has got to come first,” Tate said of the Lady Wildcats’ semifinal opponent, “or there won’t be a sectional.”