Diane Long was absent for the first time in 14 years as a Western Guilford volleyball coach, not knowing if she’d get out of bed or not, not knowing if she would ever coach or teach again, because of an undisclosed condition that put her on medical leave for eight months.
The program’s head coach since 2015, Long had guided the Fightin’ Hornets to a 162-66 overall record through 2023, going 26-1 in 2018 and 13-1 in 2020-21 and making the state playoffs in all nine of those seasons.
In 2024, Long was out from the second week of September through the remainder of the season and didn’t return on staff as a teacher until April, but she was in a part-time role. As recently as mid-July, her return as coach for the 2025 season was still an unknown.
The team finished 6-18 without Long last season and missed the NCHSAA playoffs for the first time since the year before she took over as head coach.
This year, with Long back as coach, the Hornets are 9-6 overall, fourth in the Metro 6A/7A Conference at 4-4 and are in the playoff picture as they enter Thursday’s key league match with second-place Southwest Guilford (9-9, 5-2).
“It certainly added humility and just a gratefulness to be able to do the things that I do, because when you have something and you are used to it and then you are not able to do it, it certainly gives you a perspective of ‘Oh my gosh, you never know,’” Long said.
“And so it just gave me gratefulness, and I’ve appreciated this year just being really grateful for this team and this program, and it was the kind of thing that I was looking forward to so much. I was still struggling in the spring and even in the summer physically to do the things that I normally did, but I think this team kind of gave me that little bit I needed to get back into the doors of doing what I love to do.”
Long described her current condition as not being 100% recovered but on a good trajectory, and she has returned full-time as both a coach and English teacher at the school.
The coach said she is grateful for Western’s girls basketball coach Gina Miga and Hornets’ soccer coach Meegan Bryan stepping in during her absence last season. While out, she watched matches from home when she was physically able and remained in communication with players and her replacement coaches.
The program experienced its biggest losing season by percentage since she took over as head coach. However, Long said the losing rate didn’t affect her mental health in any additional way, saying the team remained competitive despite the record’s appearance.
“Wins and losses, I love winning,” Long said. “I’m a competitor. I would run through a wall to beat somebody, but I don’t think I ever paid attention to the record until it was all said and done, and so I was like, ‘Oh wow, how did that happen?’ I wasn’t sitting there like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is awful, oh my gosh,’ because in my mind we were still competing and we were a good team and we were very talented last year.”
While the team had talent, including all-conference selections Reagan Carlyle and DyYanna Wade, Long and current players Isabella Honaker and Ava Whisnant agree that the team has had greater chemistry and togetherness this season, sparking the significant improvement.
“I think we have good energy,” Whisnant said. “Instead of going into a game thinking that we are going to lose or the game is going to be boring because we may say that the other team may not be able to compete with us, I think going into the game thinking we are going to win for each other and not just win to win is a different mindset that we have had since last season.”
This spring, even with the coaching situation still up in the air, players took it upon themselves to do offseason workouts. They’ve also found time to eat meals as a group and socialize outside of school and mandatory team activities.
“I think working together and trusting each other is definitely a big part of it, because I don’t think we had that full trust in each other last year, and I think the same thing with the good chemistry and working together,” Whisnant said. “Just that trust creates more of a bond between all of us and helps us win.”
Both Long and those players noticed a difference in this year’s team during its fifth match of the season against East Forsyth. The Hornets, previously 3-1, lost the match in five sets but saw encouraging signs playing an Eagles team led by 6-foot-3 Laney Blevins that had a big height advantage over the short but scrappy team that has focused on doing the little things right.
Western also only has eight players total, leaving just two on the bench for substitutions, which poses a challenge when playing against large-school competition.
“I think at a lot of our games where we had really good competition like at the East Forsyth, Ragsdale or Page games, I think we had really good competition there and we were playing through a lot of plays, being aggressive, and we have become a very aggressive team,” Honaker said. “We are a smaller team compared to a lot of other schools in our conference, and I think we can play a lot more aggressively than them.”
The Hornets have six regular season matches remaining on the schedule, with five of them being conference games. They have lost to first-place Grimsley twice and have a rematch with the rest of the teams going forward. They lost to Southwest and Page in first meetings but defeated Ragsdale, Dudley and Smith in previous encounters this season.
In the 6A/7A split conference, the Hornets rank first among the league’s 6A teams.
“We would like to, one, continue to beat the teams that we beat in the first round, and then we would also like to upset some teams that we are close with,” Long said.
Bryant.roche@greensboro.com
@BRocheSports
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Bryant Roche
High School Sports Reporter
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