Breaking News
Girls volleyball

Lady Red Devils volleyball season ends in semifinals

D6 2A volleyball

By Matt Michelone 4 min read

WINGATE -- When the 2025 high school girls volleyball season began, Central Cambria had to start over, losing four seniors from last year's team.

The early growing process included an early season trip to Bald Eagle Area on Sept. 4 in a match which it was swept, but from there, the Lady Red Devils went on to win 17 of their next 18 matches, including winning a rematch with the Eagles at Saint Francis in the Laurel Highlands Athletic Conference Championship.

Fast forward to Thursday night, however, for the third-seeded Lady Red Devils in the District 6 Class 2A semifinals, like all good things, their season came to an end to that same second-seeded Lady Eagles team in straight sets once again, 25-21, 25-17, 27-25.

That brought the Lady Red Devils season to a halt at 20-3.

"They were the better team tonight," Central Cambria coach Leah Montgomery said. "We can't take anything away from them. They did awesome. We had way too many unforced errors, missed serves when we shouldn't have.

They came back and I thought they were going to get it done (in set three). It wasn't our night tonight. When you get to this level, you just can't have those unforced errors."

After both teams had long runs to start set one, both traded points as Erica Brouse registered a pair of her six kills to help give Central Cambria a 19-16 lead.

But the Lady Eagles snagged momentum as Leah Bryan registered two finishes and a block to give the home team the opening set.

Set two was much of the same, but the Lady Eagles got the big run as Addelyn Fisher recorded three kills, Casey Angellotti added a block before Bryan finished the set two with an ace.

"A big thing was just energy," Bald Eagle Area coach Taylor Giedroc said. "I feel like we had a lot of energy and we just took it and ran with it. We did our jobs and focused on what we needed to do.

"Just figuring out that we need to separate to set up our hitters. I feel that's huge to keep their blockers on their toes. When we do that, we're pretty much unstoppable."

Late in set three, Bryan and Fisher struck again to make it 24-21. But Central Cambria didn't go away quietly. Mara Pablic and Allie Dziabo helped even the match at 25.

Dziabo, in her final match as a Lady Red Devil, registered five kills and three blocks -- including her 200th career block -- and Pablic finished the night with eight kills.

But Bryan thwarted the rally as she got the final point of the night, sending the Lady Eagles into the final.

"She shows up all of the time," Giedroc said. "We can always rely on her and she had another awesome night. We just love her."

Montgomery is looking back with pride on an outstanding season as she says goodbye to Dziabo, Brouse and Maryn Shirk who will graduate this spring.

"Nobody would've expected us to be here, to be the LHAC Champions," she said. "They had a great run. Most of the girls are coming back next year, too. We have two (starters) that won't be here, and they're two big shoes to fill.

"They've come really far the last couple of years. Last year we made it to districts, but we were the last seeded team. To go from that to what we went to this year, I think is phenomenal. We had a great run."

Bald Eagle Area will head to Saturday's District 6 Class 2A Championship at the Altoona Fieldhouse at 2 p.m. when it take on Richland. Both teams will advance to the PIAA playoffs with the winner hosting the WPIAL runner up and the District 6 runner up traveling to the District 3 Champion.

SERVICE POINTS

CENTRAL CAMBRIA: R. Kauffman 4, Pablic 3, Benko 4, E. Kauffman 3, Brouse 4, Ruddek 5, Dziabo 4.

Records: Central Cambria (20-3), Bald Eagle Area (19-3).

Starting at /week.