By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — As the first-ever volleyball match at John Paul Jones Arena neared its conclusion Sunday afternoon, the record crowd did its part to will the home team to victory.
“Let’s go, Hoos! Let’s go, Hoos! Let’s go, Hoos!”
With Virginia leading 8-7 in the fifth and final set, fans stood and raised that chant, and their support had the desired effect on head coach Shannon Wells’ team. With the volume inside JPJ continuing to climb, the Cavaliers closed out a dramatic come-from-behind victory over Virginia Tech.
After dropping the first two sets to the Hokies, each one by a score of 25-20, UVA stormed back to dominate the next three: 25-15, 25-15 and, finally, 15-11.
“I think the whole team was on the same page,” Tadder said. “We wanted to hit ‘em where it hurts and just keep on going, because we wanted to win.”
Wells was thrilled with the victory, her program’s third straight in the series, but she could have done without all the tension and drama, however entertaining that made it for the crowd of 3,162, the largest ever to witness a UVA volleyball match in Charlottesville.
“I did not wear my five-set shoes today,” Wells said, smiling, “but what else do you expect? You got two gritty teams battling.”
The Hoos usually play their home games at venerable Memorial Gymnasium, and the vibe at JPJ was markedly different.
“When we ran out [out of the tunnel] I kept looking around,” said junior Abby Tadder, one of Virginia’s standout middle blockers, along with graduate student Veresia Yon. “It was crazy. At Mem, you don’t really have to look up, you just look out, and here I was looking up and they were just people everywhere, which is so awesome.”
The crowd included many of the volleyball players’ fellow student-athletes, with men’s basketball, softball, football and women’s basketball among the other sports represented in the stands at JPJ.
“Of course, we always get a lot of fans [for matches] with Virginia Tech,” Tadder said, “but just to have that bigger space was incredible.”
Yon said: “Seeing all the people that came out to support us was really heartwarming.”