2025 Butler County girls volleyball storylines: North Catholic ready for WPIAL section, new Butler coach preaching defense
The difficulty of WPIAL Section 2-4A girls volleyball is hardly a secret. Having joined the grouping last season, Amanda Fetter and North Catholic can better predict what lies ahead this time around.
The Trojanettes reached the WPIAL Class 4A title game in 2024.
“Once you go through something, you know what’s coming, so it’s a little bit more easier to navigate,” Fetter said. “We didn’t know some of it until that minute or we had to make changes on the fly. Now we know.”
As they got accustomed to the grind, the Trojanettes altered their practice structure last season “just to make sure our kids were getting an adequate amount of rest for their body, which was kind of different for us,” Fetter said.
No matter the grouping, the Trojanettes have tried to remain consistently focused, but a harder slate brought about adjustments in 2024. Only three teams will make it out of the grouping into the postseason.
“It just makes it so much tougher,” Poirier said. “You've got to play so much harder during the week. There's no easy nights.”
“The section that we are in is a gauntlet,” Fetter said. “I think every coach in that section would agree that every night it’s a battle.”
First-year Butler coach Halee McCance’s approach is part of what makes things so stressful.
“I always kind of call us the underdog,” said McCance, who takes over for Meghan Lucas. “We’re maybe one of the smaller fish in the big, huge volleyball pond that we have to play in every single night. ... We expect to go five (sets). We come prepared, mentally and physically, to be able to endure a five-set match every single night in section play.”
Here are the some storylines to watch this season for each Butler County team:
McCance is familiar with the program, having played there and been an assistant on its staff for the past eight seasons. She hopes it will help with the transition. She knows how she wants her team to operate.
“I’m always very defensively focused, and passing comes first,” McCance said. “The flashy hits don’t happen if we don’t do the boots-on-the-ground first contact work.”
An official working the summer league the Yellowjackets play in made a bold prediction. It’s up to the young Freeport players to make it materialize.
“He said, ‘Tom, I’m telling you, your freshman class, they are state champs,’” Yellowjackets coach Tom Phillips said.
A crew with 11 freshmen and even more talented sophomores will look to make it’s mark this year.
The Gremlins fell just one game short of reaching the postseason last year. They have the recipe to make it in this time. Senior attacker Naomi Venesky, a Butler County all-star honorable mention last season, will be one of the key pieces back.
“Last year, a lot of our games went five sets, so we’re working on closing,” Karns City coach Taylor Callihan said. “So getting up ... and keeping that lead and finishing the game strong.”
The Planets won a WPIAL Class 3A title a season ago and made the state final, but Mars coach Tami Caraway will remind anyone they didn’t “start off winning everything.”
“People need to remember that this is a new team,” Caraway said. “It’s not the same team as it was last year, so we are gonna be spending time developing our team chemistry, our team identity.”
Having senior and Elon commit Cecilia Christy and sophomore setter Gabi Weidemann sure helps.
Heading into her ninth season in charge, Warriors coach Kaitlyn Loos admitted last year was a rough one.
“We had a lot of young girls,” Loos said. “I think, this year, now they have a season under their belt. ... They look pretty good. They’re all very close with each other, which is promising.”
Last time a Warriors crew was this close, Loos helped them to the District 9 title match in 2003.
The Trojanettes enter this season planning on raising their first WPIAL Class 4A title trophy, but “it’s everybody’s goal, though, right?” Fetter said.
Well, yeah. It’s just that, over the past half decade, the Trojanettes have been better at reaching that stage than almost everyone in the region.
“I think that’s part of what makes us, us, is we rarely talk about that,” Fetter said. “It’s there — and we know. Truthfully, it’s not a goal that I’ve ever had to outline.”
Brett Poirier and the Raiders are all-too-familiar with how teams can end up as the odd ones out in WPIAL Section 2-4A. They'll enter this season somewhat overlooked.
“I think, for not making the playoffs last year (for the first time) in a long time, we're hungry,” Poirier said. “We've got good things in place. ... I think we've got a little bit of everything. It's just got to come together.”
