The Washington Academy volleyball team is happy to spend hours on a bus, heading to faraway places like Yarmouth, Falmouth or York, because they know what each trip means.

It’s another chance for the girls from a small school up north to show just what they can do.

“That’s one of our biggest goals,” senior outside hitter Kellan Schwinn said. “Since we’re way in the east and in the middle of the woods, I think coming down here we want to make a statement.”

Tucked away in East Machias, over 100 miles from most of the state’s powerhouse teams, Washington Academy has built perhaps the best program of all of them.

The Raiders are nearly undefeated since the start of the 2020-21 season, winning 72 of 73 matches, and have won 217 sets while losing just 13. They have played in four state championships, winning Class C titles in 2021 and ’22, and a Class B championship last year.

They’ve beaten the best — taking down eventual Class A champion Gorham last year and perennial Class B power Yarmouth in each of the last three seasons. They’ve won Falmouth’s early season tournament, which also draws Class A and B contenders like Scarborough, Thornton Academy and York, twice in a row.

They’re 6-0 so far this year, and haven’t dropped a set.

And yet, the rise to the top has been met with little fanfare, coverage or recognition, compared to the bigger schools in the southern part of the state. Whether due to their small size or location, the Raiders have become the best high school team many Mainers still don’t know about.

“In the inner volleyball world, we’re all aware of them. But you go outside that, and people would assume that Scarborough or Gorham or Biddeford have the best teams in the state,” Falmouth volleyball coach Larry Nichols said. “But the last couple of years, it’s been Washington Academy.”

Gorham coach Emma Tirrell has led her team to two straight Class A titles. When asked if the Raiders could be considered the best team in the state, however, she didn’t hesitate.

“I think they’re the team to beat. Hands down, no question,” she said. “They’ve always deserved credit and not gotten it. (They’re not) just this team that snuck up on everybody. They’ve been great for a long time. But I think people look over them because they’re far away.”

‘A LITTLE CHIP ON THEIR SHOULDER’

Corey Schwinn, the Washington Academy coach and Kellan’s father, isn’t bothered by the Raiders’ obscurity; it might even be contributing to their drive to win.

“I know we don’t get all the accolades and the attention that other teams would if they were a little more in the hub of urbania,” he said after a 3-0 victory over Yarmouth on Saturday. “But that’s OK. … They like playing with a little chip on their shoulder, to prove that they can play.”

What did bother him was a perception shortly after he took over coaching the team in 2015 that volleyball up north was “second-tier.” Even after Washington won Class B titles in 2010, ’12 and ’15.

“I have had some very prominent figures in the volleyball community tell me that … we do not have elite players in our neck of the woods,” he said. “And that was motivation for us to field a program that was going to earn respect.”

It’s worked. Every Class A or B volleyball title since 2017 had been won by a school south of Freeport — until the Raiders’ win last year.

“They started playing more southern Maine teams and going to the preseason tournaments,” said Yarmouth coach Erin Hancock, whose team earned the lone win against the Raiders since the COVID-19 pandemic, beating them in the 2023 Class B final. “I think that’s where a lot of people were like ‘Who are these kids, and why are they so good?'”

Anyone watching them for the first time quickly finds out. There’s no weakness in the Washington operation, no easy area to exploit.

On offense, while Schwinn and Aubrey Faulkingham are the big hitters, multiple players rush toward the net on Lily Hennessey’s sets, leaving it unclear where the attack is coming from. Players change the direction of their hits at contact, allowing them to find the perfect spot at the last second. On defense, they’re smart and cohesive.

Former York coach Suzanne Bradley called the Raiders “the machine.” Hancock sees it too.

“They look almost like a college-level team,” she said. “It’s so smooth watching them. The pass, set, hit, they’ve got it down. They know where everyone else on the court is going to be.”

The players credit Schwinn, their coach, who works with them to develop their ability to read the game, and do it quickly.

“Every point he always tries to throw another ball in and make us think faster, and keep playing faster,” Kellan Schwinn said. “In a game where we’re playing faster competition, it helps us.”

But when the game begins, Corey Schwinn said he’s hands off. He builds the players’ game IQ, then lets them use it.

“We have students of the game,” he said. “All of the stuff on the court (Saturday), I wasn’t organizing that. That came from within. … They decide how they handle the offense, how they handle the defense.”

‘WE STILL HAVE TO PROVE IT’

Falmouth’s Nichols said Washington Academy “used to be a secret outside of (Class) B.” Now, the secret’s out.

“They’re kind of the barometer now,” he said, adding that Raiders opponents will ask each other how close they were in their defeats.

The Raiders, however, like that there’s still some mystery about them, and maybe even some remaining skeptics.

“That’s why we like to come down here,” Kellan Schwinn said after Saturday’s game in Yarmouth.

Those trips are turning heads.

“They just ball out all the time,” Gorham’s Tirrell said. “Everybody complains about driving up to them. They always do the work, they always drive down to southern Maine, and they kick people’s butts.”

The Raiders know better, though, than to get complacent.

“We feel like we always have to prove something, every single year,” Corey Schwinn said. “Here we are, how many years into it, and we feel like we still have to prove it. And a certain part of that, I don’t want to see go away.”

Finally, though, their profile is growing.