A season with championship aspirations was off to a scuffling start for the Gorham volleyball team. The offense was sputtering, and it was showing up on the scoreboard. The Rams dropped two of their first four matches, and coach Emma Tirrell knew it wasn’t the time to wait for things to sort themselves out.

“Our offense and our transition from passing to scoring a point just wasn’t generating enough,” she said.

Tirrell had an idea: Move the Rams’ best player, Liana Edwards, from playing both right-side hitter and setter to a full-time setter role, and switch from running a 6-2 with two setters to a 5-1 with one setter.

“It was that Liana needs to be touching the ball as much as possible,” Tirrell said. “(We thought) ‘Let’s see what happens when she’s the only setter.'”

With Edwards in her new role, the Rams flourished, winning 12 of their last 13 games and earning their third straight Class A championship. For her performance as Gorham’s versatile linchpin, Edwards is our choice for Varsity Maine Player of the Year for the second year in a row. Kellan Schwinn, Washington Academy’s outside hitter, was also considered.

Edwards said she was proud of how the Rams responded to the early struggles, and how they capped their season in impressive fashion with a 3-1 victory over Thornton Academy.

“Comparing this year’s state game to last year’s state game — last year, looking back, we didn’t have a lot of great, hard kills. We didn’t have a lot of swings,” Edwards said. “This year, in the Thornton Academy game, we really proved ourselves and got 10 times the amount of kills and points. We earned our points.”

In the middle of it all was Edwards, who, at 6 feet has the height of a middle blocker, the hard hit of an outside and the defensive abilities of a libero. She showcased that versatility during the season, totaling 337 assists, 171 digs, 90 kills and 41 aces.

“She’s a really talented volleyball athlete,” Tirrell said. “It is uncommon to have that (versatility). A lot of girls work their tails off during their whole entire career, but it’s just not something that comes to them as an athlete. It’s pretty cool and pretty rare that Liana has that.”

It’s setting, however, where Edwards feels most effective.

“Previously I played soccer and I was a goalie,” she said. “I’ve always had something, they would say, special with my hands.”

She was at home at the position this fall, providing the Gorham hitters with precise passes for their spikes.

“Being a setter is like being the quarterback on your team,” Edwards said. “I’ve definitely worked a lot, in and out of the gym, on my mental game, making sure I don’t get in my head from my mistakes or other people’s mistakes.”

That work ethic, Tirrell said, isn’t new.

“She puts a lot of effort into meticulously watching videos of herself play to get better,” Tirrell said. “She wants to be her best.”

This year, however, Edwards became a stronger voice in and out of matches. She took a prominent role in a team meeting after the 2-2 start, in which the Rams talked over what they felt they needed to do to turn things around.

“She’s grown a lot with her communication,” Tirrell said. “This was the first year she really harnessed bringing her other teammates with her too, and leading.”

Edwards said leadership this season was a “priority.”

“We all had to relearn how to communicate with each other, and how to all gain our leadership skills back after not playing with each other for a long time,” she said. “Everyone put in their all, and we all bonded together.”