Lafayette volleyball aims to break postseason drought under new coach

It’s early, but Taylor La Mantia, the new head coach of Lafayette volleyball, has gotten off to a good start.

The Generals earned a road sweep of 43rd District rival Tates Creek, 25-14, 25-20, 25-19, Tuesday night to improve to 3-1 overall and 1-0 in the division that contains perennial powerhouse Paul Laurence Dunbar.

“I’ve had so much fun. This is just a great group of girls,” La Mantia said. “They work really hard every single day, so it’s fun being able to push a team, and they’ve gotten so much better already. I’m so excited to see where the rest of the season takes us.”

La Mantia succeeds longtime Generals coach Chris Langston, who this summer retired after 27 years as the baseball coach at his alma mater and 24 years as its volleyball coach.

Langston won 641 games on the baseball field, ranking him among Kentucky high school baseball’s all-time leaders, but he also had an incredible record on the volleyball court, going 581-271-1 for the Generals.

Langston’s volleyball teams won three district titles, two region titles and made three state tournament appearances. He led Lafayette to the state quarterfinals in 2002 and the state semifinals in 2006.

A Toledo native who went to the University of Kentucky and fell in love with Lexington, La Mantia was head coach last season at East Jessamine where the Jaguars went 8-22 playing in the same district as five-time defending 12th Region champion West Jessamine.

Now, La Mantia jumps into a similar situation down the road from Dunbar, the two-time defending 11th Region champion. It’s a program she knows well. La Mantia was on Dunbar’s staff for its run to the 2022 state finals. Prior to that, she was an assistant at Bryan Station.

Though Lafayette had only two losing seasons under Langston since 1998, the Generals have suffered a postseason drought since their 2006 11th Region championship, making only one region tournament in the last 17 years.

That’s a trend La Mantia and her players want to change.

“I think we just lean on each other this year,” said libero Emma Sorenson, one of eight seniors and four Generals to make the Kentucky Volleyball Coaches Association’s All-State Preseason Watch List . “(Before) there was a lot of ‘We can’t do this,’ but I feel like this year, we have a mentality of ‘We’re going to do it.’ It’s not an option. We’re going to get out of districts, and we’re going to fight as hard as we can to get to state.”

If Lafayette is to end its run of poor luck in the postseason, it will probably have to do so against preseason No. 4 Dunbar, the region favorite, and No. 21 Lexington Catholic, who eliminated the Generals last season.

The Generals face Dunbar at home on Sept. 10 and go to LexCath on Oct. 9. And their Sept. 24 game against Lexington Christian will be important for district seeding.

“We’ve definitely got some big games coming up this season. We’re excited for those big games,” La Mantia said. “We’re excited to go out and be able to hopefully show out a little bit and just play our game, no matter who’s on the other side of the court.”