State champion Tigers take a victory lap in Huron

HURON -- The Huron Tigers arrived back in town at 2 a.m. Monday, a little more than four hours after clinching the Division III state volleyball championship. The streets were quiet -- a sharp contrast to what happened Sunday night at Vandalia Butler High School. The Tigers capped a dream season with a five-set victory over Independence in the last match of the state tournament. "Not a whole lot of people rolling around at 2 o'clock in the morning in Huron," Tigers coach Don Wood reported. "There were a handful of their friends who met them." More fans were able to congratulate the team at a county health department-approved parade Monday night. Wood drove his Dodge Ram pickup with his team's seven seniors in the back. "We're going to go around the block, let the community see them and send them home," Wood said before the parade. The rest of the team rode in the back of assistant coach Stephanie Hotz's truck. The celebration capped a season in which the Tigers had to fend off rivals as well as the coronavirus, which has shut down several athletic programs across the state. Wood was a stickler for following virus protocols this season, and that vigilance paid off. "Just the fact that we got to play was a great accomplishment," Wood said. Huron's win topped off a great tournament run for the Sandusky Bay Conference. Tiffin Calvert, a member of the SBC River Division, won the Division IV state title in the match that preceded Huron's win. Calvert also won it all in 2018. "It says a lot about our area," Wood said. "The volleyball in the SBC and Firelands area is fantastic." The Tigers lost two of the first three sets against Independence before rallying to win the program's fifth state title. Only six schools in Ohio have won more. Wood has been the head coach for all the titles and said each one is satisfying in different ways. "It's new every time," he said. "You have a new group of kids, a new group of students. For me personally it's just a different journey with different kids every year. It never gets old." The state tournament was held Friday through Sunday this year instead of the usual Thursday-Saturday schedule. That's because the finals were moved from Wright State University to Vandalia Butler High School, which held classes last Thursday but not Friday. The second-ranked Tigers dominated the fourth and fifth set in the D-III final. Third-ranked Independence had a total of 17 hitting errors in the first three sets before matching that total in the fourth and fifth sets as Huron's block gave the Tigers momentum. "We realized how much we've sacrificed, with everything that's going on in this world," said Huron senior outside hitter Makenna Schafer. "We realized we needed to push through and finish it up. In the huddle after we lost a game we were like, 'Guys, we didn't not come here to lose. We came here to take it all the way.' "