RALEIGH — On Friday, Sept. 6, football fans from Richmond County headed to Raleigh to watch the Richmond Senior High School varsity football team take on Cardinal Gibbons High School. However, the Raiders weren’t the only Richmond County athletes competing in the area that evening.
At the same 7 p.m. start time that the Raiders were set to kick off their game, the Pacers volleyball team of William Peace University began its match with Warren Wilson College (Swannanoa, N.C.) at Humann Athletic Center – located just over five miles away from Cardinal Gibbons.
The match was part of the Raleigh Invitational, a four-match, two-day affair which saw William Peace also take on Guilford College (Greensboro, N.C.), Randolph-Macon College (Ashland, Va.), and Bridgewater College (Bridgewater, Va.).
Proudly representing William Peace was Georgia Grace Anderson, a senior middle for the Pacers and a 2021 graduate of Richmond Senior High School. Anderson participated in middle school and high school volleyball in Richmond County, as well as competed with the Athletic Club of the Sandhills (ACS), a club program out of Moore County, but admits collegiate volleyball presented a faster pace for the Pacer.
“The tempo in college is crazy fast and it keeps getting faster and faster,” Anderson explained. “That’s probably the biggest difference from high school and club to college. Bigger girls. We are all working hard and lifting a lot more than I did in high school. Big and strong and fast to say the least.”
Anderson’s career is somewhat rare in Richmond County, as very few student-athletes from Richmond Senior have gone on to play volleyball in college, and even fewer played for four years at the collegiate level. Her introduction to college volleyball narrowly avoided being stymied by COVID-19. Despite the many uncertainties at the time, the pandemic gave Anderson a unique opportunity.
The fall 2020 season at William Peace was postponed during the pandemic and played in the spring of 2021. Just a few short months later, the Pacers started their fall 2021 season when they hosted Washington and Lee University on their home court. With a few players out with the illness and a gym full of masked spectators, Anderson, then a freshman, took to the court as part of the Pacers’ starting six in her first ever match with the program.
William Peace fell 3-1 in the match, but followed the loss with three consecutive 3-0 road wins in Danville, Va. That streak included a team high 14 kills by Anderson in the Pacers’ sweep of Shenandoah University. Anderson has started every match since.
Anderson has served as a team captain since her sophomore season. She received an honorable mention for the USA South Athletic Conference all-conference team following her sophomore season, and she was named second team all-conference following her junior year.
Majoring in elementary education, Anderson has just started her final semester at William Peace this fall. Upon completing the semester, she plans to return home to teach at L.J. Bell in Rockingham.
Back in Richmond County, interest in volleyball has grown significantly in recent years. Last Thursday, Richmond Senior High School held its second annual middle school jamboree. Rockingham Middle, Hamlet Middle, Cordova Middle and Ellerbe Middle had nearly 60 combined players participating in the event.
Three seasons ago, Cordova Middle had trouble filling the minimum six-player roster. At the jamboree, the Lady Cavaliers had 14 players dressed out.
Ellerbe Middle, the Southeastern Middle School Athletic Conference’s smallest school, had 18 girls in uniform. Anderson had a message for all of her hometown athletes who have an interest in playing volleyball at the next level.
“Keep working hard, keep pushing,” Anderson said. “Volleyball is not huge in Richmond County, but it’s getting there slowly, so keep working with what you got. Play travel if you can, play rec, play middle school, play high school, do it all. Don’t just stick to volleyball obviously, do everything.”
Since William Peace’s Sept. 6 meeting with Warren Willson College, the Pacers have won five of their last six matches. Anderson has 68 kills for the Pacers this season. William Peace begins conference play on Wednesday when it plays host to Pfeiffer University.
