By Ben Spector
Winning After MidKnight
Erika
Pritchard is not your average senior on the Middletown High School Knights
Varsity Volleyball team.
For starters,
she is one of the tallest members of her team towering over some fellow
teammates giving her a larger than life feel that is well warranted especially
considering how her play backs that up.
Secondly,
she’s already locked into playing college volleyball. At Maryland. In the Big
Ten. The Big Ten that has been labeled as “to college volleyball as what the
SEC is to college football”.
Finally, she
can hit the life out of a volleyball. Don’t believe us? Try standing in front
of one of Pritchard’s spikes. As Jake Taylor said in Major League, “If that thing hits ya, it’ll leave a two foot hole
comin’ out the other side.”
So, yes Erika
Pritchard is in many ways not your typical high school senior.
But, this
year Pritchard will hope to do something very similar to a large number of high
school seniors who are playing volleyball across the state of Maryland. She’ll
hope to lead her team to a state championship, something that Middletown has
never accomplished in the history of their program and in the 41 years that
state championships for volleyball have been held in the state of Maryland.
The
volleyball state championship has been one of the more elusive ones for the
Middletown Athletics program as a whole as it is one of just a selective few
that the Knights have not one and that list has gotten smaller with football
and softball both winning their first state championships recently.
The biggest
change for the Knights this year will be the person leading them to that goal
as former head coach Aubrey Pfau is out, leaving to become the Director of
Volleyball Operations for the University of Maryland, a move that left a hole
in the Knights coaching staff.
In for the
Knights, is Jamie Pryor, who was already on the Athletic Department staff as an
Assistant Athletic Director and now adds Varsity Volleyball Head Coach to that
title. Pryor will be in charge of leading a Knights’ team that returns seven of
its players from last year but is surprisingly young given that statistic, as
only five seniors will suit up for the Knights.
Outlining
even more how young this Middletown team is that the starting lineup will most
likely be compromised of at least half Juniors, with in some games Middletown
starting almost all Juniors, save for Pritchard.
It will be
interesting to see how this season goes because even in a loaded 2A West region
that has given the Knights headaches in years’ past if the youth on the Knights
can mesh up with the solid play of Pritchard than this team could legitimately
become a dark horse in a region where they are most likely being overlooked
because of the pedigrees of some of their other conference opponents such as
the Williamsport High School Wildcats.
Pritchard
already has racked up various accolades throughout her career as she has won
the Frederick News-Post Player of the
Year award for Frederick County and has already reached 700 kills in her career.
With more illustrious records sure to come this year, it will be a time that
Pritchard will get to shine and put the full depth of her skills on display.
In the end,
there will be on goal that Pritchard and her teammates will have staring at
them this whole season. A state championship.
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