Spring Garden’s Class 1A substate match at Guin last Thursday was almost as long as the team's seven-hour round trip.

The Region C third place finisher Lady Panthers and Region D runner-up Marion County battled it out for more than two hours, and when the final whistle sounded the Garden Girls earned their fifth consecutive trip to the Elite Eight state volleyball tournament with a 22-25, 26-24, 25-19, 20-25, 15-9 victory.

Spring Garden will be making its eighth appearance at the Pelham Civic complex.

The Lady Panthers (42-7) take on Region B winner Jefferson Christian in the quarterfinals on Wednesday at 11 a.m. If it wins, Spring Garden faces the Donoho/Parrish winner in the semifinals at 7 p.m.

The 1A championship match is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. on Thursday.

“That was the most intense volleyball competition that I’ve been involved in my 12 years as coach,” said Spring Garden head coach Ricky Austin. “Marion County played great, and it’s a shame that they can’t move on. Our girls played pretty well, but there were so many 10 or 15 volleys that we didn’t get points off of. We played well in the first game that we wound up losing, but [Marion County] just got better and better as the match went on and they seemed to have all the momentum.”

Austin said that the match’s turning point came early in game 5.

“We were down 3-0, then tied it, then there was a really long volley that we finally converted to go ahead 4-3. We got the momentum after that and finished off the game with a pretty good run. We really were fortunate to win.”

For the Lady Panthers, Paige Anderson finished with 25 kills, followed by Olivia Mobley with 20, Bridgett Parris with eight, Shelby Malone with six and Tara Mullinax with four.

Hannah Hutcheson distributed 50 assists