Orange Beach, AL – (OBA) –Orange Beach volleyball coach Jackie Arnold took a similar approach to the recently concluded season as last year’s softball team.

“We took ‘em to team camps and tried to add in a hard schedule where some teams want all the wins we wanted to play some hard teams,” Arnold said. “We did knock off some 7A through 5A but playing in tournaments like that only made us better for the end.”

Earlier this month the Lady Makos went to Birmingham for the state tournament and brought home the second-place trophy in their second year of competition.

On a run to the state title last spring, Orange Beach’s softball team took on all comers and had several wins over the schools in the largest classifications in the state with student enrollments higher than 1,000 and some as much as 2,000. In the 2020-2022 realignment Class 2A Orange Beach had a daily enrollment of 143.

“We just didn’t have anyone hit a homerun at the end,” Arnold said.

Arnold and staff led the Lady Makos to the state title game in just the second year of the program and her first year as head coach here. In the first season of 2020 the team made the state tournament but fell in an opening round.

In this year’s state tournament, the Lady Makos found themselves down early to a team Arnold felt wasn’t quite as good as Orange Beach.

“I think if there was anything I’d have to say about the team is they have grit,” Arnold said. “It’s called Mako grit that everyone talks about and our quarter final match we were down 0-2 against a team that we were way better than. I think being a young team nerves got the best of them but then they turned it around and crushed ‘em the next three. That put us into the semis and then we didn’t turn back.”

Awaiting in the final match was perennial volleyball power the Addison Lady Bulldogs.

“Addison’s an amazing team,” Arnold said. “That coach and I have gotten close and she does a great job. They are 13-time state champions and she was on one of their teams as a player then was the assistant and now the head coach. We’re young and the girls had never been in that kind of arena it kind of got the best of them.”

Softball coach Shane Alexander said the Mako grit starts at the top with Principal Dr. Robbie Smith.

“I’ve coached basketball against her in north Alabama and she had grit and her teams had grit,” Alexander said. His team will also return an intact roster when it opens the 2022 season this spring to defend its state championship.

Smith praised the grit and determination of all the girls’ teams at Orange Beach from basketball to soccer to bowling.

“She is fierce and this is how I view our Lady Mako athletic program,” Smith said. “These girls are fierce. We have adopted the hashtag #MakoGrit from the very beginning for all our athletic programs. Speaking specifically to our girls, they demonstrate Mako Grit time and time again.”

And it has brought the girls program amazing success across all sports in just two years of playing.

“Going back to our first year of varsity competition our volleyball, bowling, golf, soccer, cross country, track, basketball, tennis and softball all were in some form of post season competition,” Smith said. “The volleyball team finished second at Super Regionals in 2020 and went on to compete at state. Our girls’ soccer team was our first ranked team in the history of our sports program overall and of course most know about the Cinderella story of softball team. Volleyball followed up an appearance at state last year with a runner-up finish this year.”

Smith said as a coach she followed a simple rule she learned when she heard legendary Tennessee coach Pat Summit speak.

“At a coaching clinic she was asked for the best tips on coaching girls,” Smith said. “She glared at the person who posed the question and said ‘don’t worry about coaching girls. Just go coach basketball.’ I think we have that mentality here in our sports program. They are athletes and are treated as such.”

Next volleyball season most of those younger players will return with a year of experience and almost every single player will return for the 2022 season.

“We have one senior and the majority of our lineup are sophomores,” Arnold said. “We took over as a coaching staff around June and worked their tails off working on the little things. Both coach Mike and I are big on technique and just doing the little things like ball control.”

For information on all of the Orange Beach High School athletic teams, click here.