RADNOR — Caroline Smith and her Germantown Academy volleyball teammates were going through preseason practice and workshopping t-shirt ideas three months ago with no idea how prescient they could be.
The Patriots had won the Inter-Ac title the previous fall, their first outright crown since 2015. But the season ended on a loss thanks to Notre Dame in the Pennsylvania Independent Schools Athletic Association tournament. The sting didn’t fade for Smith.
“Yeah no, it was horrible,” she said. “We were like, oh my god we need that this year. We need it for our seniors, for everyone. It fit for that.”
So a t-shirt was born, the words, “Not. Done. Yet.” printed on the back, periods for emphasis. And after the Patriots wrapped up another Inter-Ac title and found the Irish waiting for them in another PAISAA final, the chance to live out its message vividly presented itself.
Smith led GA with 23 kills Wednesday, helping rectify last year’s blemish with a 3-1 win in the PAISAA final at the Agnes Irwin School. It’s the first title for GA in the tournament, the first for any team that is not Notre Dame, which had won the event’s first nine installments.
Smith led GA to a win by game scores of 25-17, 25-19, 32-34 and 25-20. It’s their third win over Notre Dame this season, having dropped just two sets.
With Smith, a junior outside hitter who can play in just about every rotation, leading the attack, it looked destined to be a short day for the Irish. But that wild third set, in which GA spurned six match points, including five on errors, kept Notre Dame alive. Ultimately, Smith was the most consistent source of offense for either side, which saw GA through a hotly contested if occasionally uneven affair.
The first set was put to bed early, thanks to a slew of miscues on both sides. Angie Wang’s five-point service run created space, and Smith provided four kills.
Notre Dame fought back to be tied at 17 in the second. But GA libero Olivia Reynolds cranked up two of her four aces in a row, clipping the net tape twice to swing the set in GA’s favor. It would rattle off eight of the final 10 points, Smith finishing with a kill from the left side.
“I think those were huge,” Smith said of Reynolds. “It got us really hype for her winning those points. They couldn’t do anything about it, and they could tell we got more momentum for that. I think that brought us together and gave us more momentum to go and win.”
Notre Dame’s championship past showed in its refusal to go quietly.
“I think our energy went up much more than we had in the first set,” outside hitter Vikki Zelubowski said. “I think we cleaned up mistakes. We had less unforced errors, and we cleaned up our swings.”
Most of what worked for the Irish went through Zelubowski, who led the way with 19 kills. Next was Maddi Brown with seven, and Kayla Edginton added four kills and five blocks.
But Zelubowski was the engine. Her kill at 8-8 in the second gave Notre Dame its first lead. When they trailed 17-13 in the third, Zelubowski fired home four kills in a five-point stretch to even it at 18.
Back and forth they went, Brown with a big kill as the third set crossed 30 points and an ace from Erin Flanagan making it 33-32 before her dipping serve forced an error to extend the match.
“It was stressful,” Zelubowski said. “Everyone was scared. But we did not want it to be over. We were fighting. We were not going to let them get it that easy. We kept pushing and we won that set.”
Notre Dame struggled passing in the first set but improved in the middle sets. Libero Natalia Zelubowski steadied her game with some excellent defense.
GA didn’t let the near miss deflate them. Instead, it fueled Smith.
“For me, it fires me up more,” Smith said. “It gets me more intense in my mindset, and I think my teammates agree with me.”
Smith did a little of the coaching after three sets, too. She and opposite Hadley Evans (12 kills) were firing along. But adding a consistent attacking presence through the middle, where Edginton had controlled matters, was important.
So GA pushed the play centrally. Emily Pokorny fired home four kills in five points – the first with such ferocity as to draw a surprised and approving look from older sister Kaitlin – to turn an 8-5 set into 13-5.
“After the third set, I was on the sideline and I was like, ‘we need to run our middles,’” Smith said. “And that’s what we did. It helped us so much.”
Notre Dame again didn’t go quietly. It would get within 22-18, thanks to three kills from Vikki Zelubowski, a back-row kill from Paityn Kehoe and an ace from Brown. It fit the fight back that has characterized Notre Dame’s season.
“It sucks to lose, but we made it to the finals this year,” Vikki Zelubowski said. “We had so many injured players who we lost during the season. We lost so many people, but we made it this far, and I think we’re all happy that we got to make it to the finals.”
Smith stopped the bleeding with a kill to stabilize the fourth at 23-19. Evans fired one off the block and down, and the setter Wang (24 assists) floated in an ace to fulfill the season’s screen-printed vow.
“We’ve been saying it all season,” Smith said, “and it’s kind of been our thing.”
