PELHAM — The Daphne Trojans faced the best 6A team in the state right off the bat Wednesday in the quarterfinals of the Elite Eight state volleyball tournament in Pelham. DHS fell in three games 25-11, 25-18, 25-10 to the eventual 6A state champion Huntsville Panthers, but fought hard and had the six-time state champs on the ropes with a 15-3 lead in game two.

"Of course we don't like to come up here and lose," said Daphne coach Kay Flarity. "But it's tough to draw a team like Huntsville. They are by far the best team we have played all year. We played McGill and Murphy a couple of times and of course they're very good. We went to the Hoover tournament, but we didn't get a chance to play Grissom. You try to do what you can during the regular schedule and expose your team to that level of play as much as possible. But it still comes down to who's strong and who's quick and who's got ball control."

Grissom's Tigers would wind up as the runner-up to Huntsville in the battle of the big Huntsville area cats. Grissom eliminated Murphy and Huntsville knocked out McGill-Toolen Catholic in the semifinals. Ranked No. 8 by the Alabama Sports Writers Association in 6A going into the state tournament, DHS finished the year 36-22 overall. It was the Trojans' third straight visit to the big dance ending the 2009 season tied for fourth in the state. Huntsville compiled a 61-4 season record.

"I'm proud of our girls, our team," Flarity, now in her fourth year at DHS, said. "We blocked some of the best hitters in the state and picked up some of the best serves. That's how I try to leave it for the girls. Don't let this be a downer for a successful season for us. Daphne has been here, now, three out of the last four years and just getting here is an accomplishment. I'm hopeful, we'll continue to build on our experiences here. You always set goals at the beginning of the season. One of ours was to host a substate, but we didn't quite get that this year, but you just have to keep building. Every year we hope to do better and keep attracting more athletes to come out and try the program. Against Huntsville, we didn't quit. But then we got behind two really tough servers and we needed better serve-receive as well. And we needed to have more aggressive serving, too, and that would have helped to keep them out of system some. Let's face it, the Huntsville area is dominating the sport right now, especially at 6A, and it's hard to compete with kids who play all year round at a high level."

Flarity said she had good leadership from her four seniors and looks to a continued bright future for the volleyball program.

"I think Brooke Carpenter and Erin Patterson had a great game for us. They really stepped up their serve-receive game against Huntsville and carried the team leadership-wise for us. I'm proud of our other two seniors Amber Fassbender and Lauren Hagler for helping us all season.

Coming back, I think all our younger players gave great effort for us all year. I think Sierra Patterson, our talented sophomore outside, did a tremendous job blocking that big outside hitter they have. As far as the future goes, we have a bunch of dedicated sophomores and juniors and they understand it takes a high level of commitment to get here and I hope they will all renew that commitment and work to get us back next year."

The Trojans were led at the net by Courtney Carter, Cherilyn Ramsey, Sierra Patterson and Deanna Vogler; in assists by Carpenter and Kayla Owens; defensively by Erin Patterson, Krista Owens and Amber Yelding.