Tawa’s Dots: More state titles, including Bayside (AL) and remarkable coach Schilling

This is “Dots,” VolleyballMag.com’s weekly look at 10 things in high school volleyball, past or present, that interest me and hopefully will interest you. Look for Dots through the last high school state championship this month:

• The number of states that have concluded their fall volleyball seasons now stands at nine. Alabama, Arkansas, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas and Maine finished up in the past week. Another 10 will crown champions by Sunday, including Oregon, where I’ll be after my 770-mile drive on Thursday (Yay me!).

In high school volleyball, only Junior Nationals in June/July can produce as much excitement.

• The biggest story of the week, indeed, the biggest story of the year is Bayside Academy of Daphne, Alabama. The Admirals, a school with fewer than 300 students, won the Alabama 6A title last week. They defeated three-time defending 7A champion Mountain Brook in the semifinals and Spanish Fork, the team that defeated them for the regional title just a few days earlier, in a five-set championship thriller. Junior setter Blakely Robbins was named MVP after hoisting 57 assists in the final, adding 11 digs, four kills and four aces. Haley Robinson, a freshman, led four hitters in double figures with 19 kills. Misty Kate Smith, a sophomore, added 14 kills and 15 digs. Mary Whitehurst, another freshman, contributed 34 digs and two aces. Grier Broughton, yet another freshman, totaled 21 digs to go along with three kills and two aces.

• If that’s all there was — small school wins big school state title with three freshmen playing major roles – that would be a helluva story. But this story has so many more layers. Twenty-one (21) more, in fact.

If you read my writing faithfully (and with a Hi-Liter, which you should), you’ve read about Bayside Academy and its longtime head coach, Ann Schilling, before.

On Thursday, Bayside won its national-record 31st state title. The Admirals have won in Class 1A, Class 2A, Class 3A, Class 4A, Class 5A and, in its first year, in Class 6A. Twenty-eight  (28) of those titles came with Schilling, who’s coached at Bayside for 36 years, on the bench.

But that’s not the most amazing thing. The most amazing thing is that, for TWENTY-ONE STRAIGHT YEARS, Bayside Academy has been a state volleyball champion. The last five have come while Schilling has been battling Stage 4 breast cancer. She has leaned hard into her Christian faith to give her strength during her…