MIDDLEBURG - With three double-digit hitters returning volley on the vaunted Middleburg High volleyball defense, Beachside High did the unlikely with a second match win over the Lady Broncos in the Broncos gym with the Barracudas’ 3-1 win Saturday afternoon ending the repeat hopes of Middleburg coach Meredith Forkum to get a second Class 5A title.

Forkum coyly agreed that, in her first two years, she felt the proverbial “Thrill of victory and agony of defeat.”

“It was an emotional roller coaster,” said Forkum. “We’ll just have to remember this for next year.”

Beachside, ranked third in Class 5A, beat Middleburg, the second seed, and will advance to play No. 1 seed Tallahassee Chiles on Tuesday in Tallahassee. Chiles beat Ponte Vedra, the number four seed, in their region semifinal.

In the region 1-1A semifinal, St. Johns Country Day School lost 3-0 to top seed St. Johns Lutheran of Ocala.

“We just didn’t have our best game on the defensive side and they came here and outplayed us,” said Forkum, who finishes at 22-5. “This is such a tough region and the probably Class 5A champion will come from one of those two teams; Beachside or Chiles, I think.”

In the second game, the same scenario opened up the scoring with Middleburg getting up to a 15-9 gap behind Rahn and Forkum’s double barrel attacks above net; with four kills apiece.

Beachside regrouped after a spirited time out and chit-chat from coach Austin Lanteigne and got the score tied at 18-18 before sneaking away aided by misfires from Forkum and Maysie Bader, a final service ace to score the 25-22 win.

For Forkum, who witnessed her daughter, Brooke, a senior outside hitter, nearly willing her Lady Broncos in the final game to a fourth game win and put the game into overtime.

“We won the first game by hitting our shots hard at the net,” said Forkum. “They came back and we got back our lead to 19-12 before finishing them at 25-17. The first game, I thought, was important because they won earlier in the season 3-0 and I thought the momentum had to come to us early.”

In the third game, Middleburg got to a 19-12 lead with Bader, Rahn, and Kate Lowery getting on fire at the net. Bronco setter Olivia Callipo teamed with Lowery for a series of quick sets to hard kills through the Beachside double block attempts before Bader stuffed Beachside lead hitter Adriana Jeanpierre for a 15-11 lead. Rahn got two more kills and a service ace to put the game at 19-15 before Middleburg started misfiring at the net and in the defensive backline with Beachside closing to 21-20 off four unforced errors.

“Their services were working well for them and we weren’t catching them clean,” said Forkum. “Just nerves, I guess.”

Both teams started a back-and-forth thunderfest at the net as the Bronco gym decibel level hit a high pitch with the game locked at 23-23. A strike by Jeanpierre and a service ace gave Beachside the final two points.

Beachside, with a 2-1 advantage, dominated the latter part of game four to a 23-11 advantage with the underclass triple combination of hitters Mississippi State commit and junior Adriana Jeanpierre’s match-leading 19 kills, with 16 and 13, respectively, from junior Erica Duffy and sophomore Mollie VanDeusen.

At the 23-11 mark, Forkum put in a surprisingly new face on the court in junior Hayden Gorneault, coincidentally, a niece to the Forkums.

“She’s my niece and was a junior varsity player for the first half of the season, then improved enough that we thought we could use her on varsity,” said Forkum. “Her service was always low and consistently hit the spots we wanted on the other side.”

For Gorneault, to be chosen to provide the proverbial spark to a team of chiseled veterans of the state championship pedigree, the nerves did not seem to affect her after her first service landed an ace after bombs from Brooke Forkum and junior hitter Camden Rahn closed the score to 24-15.

“I never thought I’d get in to play,” said Gorneault. “I just said to myself to take a deep breath and stay calm. I just wanted to hit the zone they wanted me to.”

From there, Gorneault continued the near-miracle comeback with the Broncos scoring 10 unanswered points before Beachside scored the match-winner to 25-22.

“I knew she would come through as our spark,” said Brooke Forkum. “It was special that she is my cousin too.”