Its baseball program has owned the N.C. Christian Schools Association’s 2A ranks of late and its boys’ basketball program also has a state championship under its belt. Until last weekend, those were the only two programs at Bethel Christian Academy who could say they had won a state title.

Not anymore.

Thanks to cohesion unlike any Trojans volleyball team has seen, they met their goal of winning a state championship Saturday by defeated Hilltop Christian of Fuquay Varina at Tri-City Christian School in Conover.

“It was like a dream when we won. We were like, did this just happen?” senior opposite hitter Kendall Worthington said.

The title run began during the summer months when most kids are enjoying their last few weeks of freedom by sleeping in. The Trojans arrived on campus at 6:30 every morning for practice, and became a better team for it, coach Michelle Williams said.

She added that while her team was busy practicing as the sun rose, its stock in winning a state title was rising as well.

“Every morning I would say, ‘We’re doing this to go to the championship,’” Williams said. “That was our goal from Day 1, and I told them I thought we could do it.”

The Trojans (15-2), who rallied from behind in the championship match to defeat Hilltop, 3-2, a day after rallying from behind in the semifinals, are a young group. Of the 12 on the roster, only a third are seniors.

Those seniors — Worthington, Hannah Leigh, Samantha Murphy and Courtney Stroud — credited a “drama-free” environment and a never-let-die attitude as main contributors to their success.

“All of us got along this year,” Leigh said. “It was good to see how all of the practicing paid off.”

Williams couldn’t agree more.

“When they got down in a game last year they’d roll over. This year, instead of getting upset, they would go at it and come back and win. They would never give up,” she said.

For a team that went 15-2, the seniors said there were no easy matches. Because of that, the Trojans learned how to fight with their backs against the wall. They never looked ahead and always focused on the opponent at hand.

One by one the wins piled up, and before Bethel could blink it was standing with the state championship trophy Saturday afternoon.

“You just go and play your hardest in every game, and just take it a game at a time and that’s pretty much what we did,” Murphy said.

In the end, the Trojans had a plan all along and that plan was unveiled on Saturday.

In the not-so-distant future, the school will next unveil the banner from its first girls’ state championship.

“A lot of them, volleyball is not their favorite sport but they have grown to love the sport,” Williams said. “I believed that they had the talent to do it. I knew if they came together and played as a team they could beat just about anybody.”