SPRING GARDEN -- Sand Rock senior setter Chelsey Chambers called Saturday ‘the best day of the whole season so far.’ A lot of her teammates are feeling the same way, as Sand Rock captured its first Cherokee County volleyball tournament crown.

The top-seeded Lady Wildcats (40-4) took the tournament title with relative ease. All three of their matches went only two games. Sand Rock opened tournament play with a 25-12, 25-7 win over Cedar Bluff, and then defeated Cherokee County in back-to-back matches (25-13, 25-21 and 25-13, 25-14) to earn the title.

It’s the school’s first county volleyball crown.

“It’s actually surprising,” senior right side defender Lauren Bell said. “I never knew we had never won one. It’s just great to win it our senior year. We’ve all worked really hard.”

Much like a lot of their matches earlier this season, the Lady Wildcats had contributions from the top to the bottom of their lineup.

Bell had 23 digs and 10 aces for the tournament. Chambers added 50 assists and five aces. Jennifer Campbell posted 19 kills, 12 digs and three blocks. Carrie Robertson and Megan Battles had 17 and 13 kills respectively. Karlie Anderson came away with seven kills and five blocks. Logan Smith and Gena Farmer had 11 and six digs respectively.

“We don’t have a dominant player or a weak link. We’re equal on all levels,” Chambers said. “We just put all of that together, and we have an awesome team this year. We work as a team, and we are a team.”

Sand Rock coach Lisa Bates said she’s tried not to mention too much to her girls about winning a county crown. She couldn’t help herself, however, when the Lady Wildcats were pitted against the Lady Warriors for the fifth time this season in the title match.

“Right before we went out for the last game, I told them ‘This is you last chance to ever play Cherokee County in volleyball.’ They got fired up about that,” Bates said. “They were like, ‘Yeah, let’s get them this one last time.’”

The Lady Wildcats have come close to earning county titles before under Bates in her seven years at the school, but have never gotten over the hump. Now, that monkey has been lifted off their backs.

“This is a special group of girls,“ Bates said. “We thought this would be our year for this, but we have not even mentioned it. We took that approach this year.

“We were just going to come in and play like we normally play, just play strong. I was proud of how we played today. We didn’t let anything get us down. We played on top the whole day, and it was a good feeling.”

While the Lady Wildcats are feeling good about themselves now, they still know more work has to be done. Sand Rock now has its eyes set on the area tournament on Oct. 13 and beyond.

“We’re trying to take it one step at a time,“ Bates said. “Now that we’ve gotten past county, we can breathe a little bit. Getting past that, I think that will help our confidence going into the area tournament and then hopefully on to regionals.

“We know we’ve got some tough teams ahead of us, and volleyball is a very up-and-down sport as far as emotions. We’re just trying to take it one win at a time. This group of girls can do something special when they’re clicking and playing really well together.”