By John Raffel
North Branch’s Laura Wilson smiled when she was told that her coach, James Fish, called her the “best hitter” that he’s had in his 15 years of coaching volleyball at the school.
“It’s awesome,” the senior outside hitter said after having 22 kills and eight digs in North Branch’s 3-0 Class B state championship victory over Lakewood. “I feel honored to be told that. Not just me, but pretty much everyone else on the team has worked pretty much since third grade, all our lives, for this moment. Being our senior year and winning this showed all of our hard work has actually paid off.”
Wilson smacked the winning kill in the third game for the tight 25-23 victory.
“Madee Miner set me up a few times before it, and they dug it up,” Wilson said. “Madee told me she was going to keep setting me until we got that point. That’s what she did. I just went up and hit.”
Wilson has played the sport with many of her teammates since elementary school and acknowledged that winning a state title was their main goal. “We would always go to the games when we were young, including here in 2009 and 2010, and watch them,” Wilson said. “It feels great to actually win a state championship and to be up there with them.”
North Branch won the title in 2009 and won the first two sets of the final match in 2010 before losing 3-2 to Fruitport.
This season, “we had a few rough patches along the way,” Wilson said. “We found a way to mesh together.”
In the semifinal, the Broncos had to get past defending state champion Notre Dame Preparatory and its star player, 2014 Miss Volleyball, Katherine Carlson.
“They took what we wanted, and we weren’t going to let them have it this year,” Wilson, herself a Miss Volleyball finalist, said.
She’s now looking at a possible collegiate volleyball career. “I’m talking to Central Michigan right now,” she said.
Wilson noted that her defense has especially improved this season. “Being 6’1″, it’s not that easy,” she said. “But that’s the most improvement out of my game, my defense.”