The Archbishop McNicholas Rockets are state champions again — and they had to leave the building to prove it. McNicholas swept Parma Padua Franciscan 25-20, 25-23, 25-11 on Saturday at Wright State University’s Nutter Center to win the Ohio High School Athletic Association Division III girls volleyball state championship in front of a state-final crowd at the Nutter Center, the program’s second straight state title, capping a dominant 2026 season with a 5 p.m. final that included a 49-minute evacuation stoppage, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.
The interruption came at the start of the second set. A fire alarm sounded inside the Nutter Center, everyone in the building was evacuated, and the championship match stopped for 49 minutes, according to the Enquirer’s championship report. McNicholas had already won the first set 25-20 before the evacuation, the Enquirer reported in its initial account of the delay.
The cause, once officials traced it, was almost stranger than the delay itself. Per OHSAA media relations director Tim Stried, the Enquirer reported, a popcorn maker being moved in an elevator from the Nutter Center to McLin Gymnasium for a Wright State women’s match filled the elevator with smoke and set off the fire alarm; it was unclear whether the machine actually caught fire. The Enquirer’s Brendan Connelly, who was among those evacuated, reported a smell of something burning on the way out. Fire department personnel handled the issue at the scene, and the players were given a 20-minute warm-up before play resumed, the Enquirer reported; no injuries were reported in the evacuation.
The match itself was a fight before it was a sweep. The first two sets featured 15 ties and seven lead changes, the Enquirer reported, and Padua — playing in the ninth state championship match in school history, according to Padua Franciscan athletics — pushed the Rockets in both. Padua had reached the final by beating Bloom-Carroll in four sets in Friday’s semifinal, 25-22, 22-25, 28-26, 25-14, the school reported.
After the long stoppage, McNicholas came back cold. The Rockets, in the Enquirer’s account, experienced “ignition problems” when play resumed — until three Savanna Stacey kills and an Annabel Comer block propelled them to the brink of the repeat, closing out the second set 25-23. From there the defending champions ran away: the third set was 25-11, and the sweep — and the second straight gold trophy — was theirs.
The title finished a remarkable weekend for Cincinnati-area volleyball at the Nutter Center. Earlier Saturday, Kings topped Magnificat in four sets to win the Division II state championship, and Fenwick beat Ottawa-Glandorf for the Division IV title, while Versailles swept Coldwater for the Division V crown — four of the weekend’s state finals won by Southwest and West Central Ohio programs on the same floor.
The weekend’s other finals underlined the depth of the field McNicholas topped. Kings needed four sets to beat Magnificat for the Division II title (25-20, 19-25, 25-20, 25-13), and Versailles swept Coldwater for the Division V crown (27-25, 25-11, 25-12) in an all-Midwest Athletic Conference final, the Stateline Sports Network reported. McNicholas was the only champion Saturday that had to survive an evacuation to finish the job.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on
What we know: McNicholas is the Division III state champion for the second straight year, winning the final in straight sets (25-20, 25-23, 25-11) after a 49-minute evacuation caused by a smoking popcorn maker in an elevator, per the Enquirer and OHSAA. Padua Franciscan’s season ends in the state final, the program’s ninth championship-match appearance. What we’re still waiting on: the official match statistics and all-tournament honors from the OHSAA, which will fill in the individual lines behind the sweep.
What happens next is a celebration in Cincinnati: the Rockets will bring a second straight state championship trophy home from Fairborn this week, while Padua returns to Parma with a state runner-up finish — the Bruins’ ninth trip to a state final ends as a measuring stick for a program that expects to be back. Match details in this report are from the Cincinnati Enquirer, which covered the final on site, with Padua’s semifinal result reported by Padua Franciscan athletics.