Staff photo / Brian Yauger Jackson-Milton’s Peyton Ford hits the ball over the net during the first set of Thursday’s regional semifinal matchup against Monroeville in Burton.

BURTON — The Jackson-Milton volleyball program’s season came to a close on Thursday, falling in three sets, 25-15, 25-16, 25-16, to Monroeville in a Division VII, Region 25 semifinal matchup.

Each time the Blue Jays found themselves in a hole, they would claw back into the game. They went down, but they didn’t make it easy on the opposition.

Jackson-Milton knew they were underdogs. They knew the Eagles’ record, and they knew that no one expected them to make it this far. Why not embrace that underdog status, play as hard as you can, and let the chips fall where they may?

“We came within one (point) in the third set, we were within one in the second set too,” Blue Jays coach Sue Prozy said. “We were struggling a little bit passing early on because the nerves got the better of us. We missed four serves in the first set. Again, nerves.

“Monroeville has been here the last couple years. My girls haven’t been. This is my second year back, so just trying to get them to buy into what we’re trying to do. I kept telling them, ‘We’re here. Did anyone expect to be here? Did anyone expect us to be here this year?’ They were like, ‘No,’ so I told them to have some fun. Play hard and have fun.”

It wasn’t an easy season for the Blue Jays, who finished the year with a 12-14 record. Going into the tournament, Jackson-Milton lost five of its last six games, getting swept in three of them.

But once the tournament started, a switch flipped. The Blue Jays won each of their three tournament games, including the district championship match over Ashtabula St. John, in 3-0 sweeps.

“I think it just started clicking for us,” Prozy said. “They bought in early, but we were losing those games, and they were close games. We’d go to four (sets) with McDonald, who won the league, so we were playing against these good teams, and our league is pretty strong, and we just would fall a little short. … We stayed true to our game and it finally started clicking for us, I think, at the end of the season, and that’s when you want it to.”

Before the season began, the Blue Jays attended a tournament in Sandusky. The big takeaway from that tournament was that the team needed to work on speeding up its game. If they could do that, they’d be in good shape.

“When we came back from that tournament in July, we started working on speeding up our game,” Prozy said. “Our win-loss record kind of reflected that sometimes, because there were a lot of games that we were in and lost by two or three points, but we stayed true to what our goal was. We’re playing for that end game, to do better in the tournaments and things like that. That was our goal this year, was just kind of speed up our game, try to get to the next level. We have a lot of girls returning, so we’re excited about what our future holds here at Jackson-Milton.”

With a relatively young team, the Blue Jays hope this isn’t its last appearance on the regional stage.

“We’ve been here, now we win the next one,” Prozy said. “Part of the experience is that we were here. I know the nerves got the best of them, some of the younger ones especially, but we’ve got a lot to build on, and I’m really excited about that.”