Just five days before Athens Academy's volleyball team is to play in the Class A Private state championship game, coach Jane Thomas is running the Spartans' offense as a setter on one side of the net.

On the other side of the court, her daughter Mara, a junior who ranks 10th in the state with 929 assists this season, is pacing the offense for the other half of Athens Academy's squad.

The Spartans were missing a couple players for this practice, forcing Thomas to jump in and play in their absence and give the Spartans an even amount of players as they prepare for Mount Paran Christian and Saturday's 11 a.m. championship match in Cartersville.

Practice didn't miss a beat, especially with Thomas, a three-time All-American at Kentucky in the early 1990s whose 1,664 assists in 1991 ranks seventh all-time for a single season in the SEC record books.

"Occasionally I’ll get in there when I need to," said Thomas, who also spent two stints as an assistant at UGA. "It’s a lot of fun. It’s not quite the same back when I was young like Mara, but it’s still really fun to do it and I enjoy it."

With Jane coaching and Mara setting, Athens Academy has formed one of its most complete teams as it seeks its first state championship since 2002.

It's little surprise to learn that Mara has been around the game since she was young, participating in drills with players much older than her while 'hanging in there and doing fine,' according to Jane.

Jane let Mara participate in numerous activities, but it was volleyball that Mara fell in love from an early age.

Once she made it to the high school level, Jane said it was odd at first but the two easily discovered that the mother-daughter relationship was different than coach-player.

"Initially I was thinking ‘what’s this going to be like coaching my daughter?’" said Jane, now in her eighth season as Athens Academy's coach. "But really, when we walk into the gym we’ve kind of established that line. Mara responds to me well as a coach and then when we go home we’re kind of back to the normal family dynamic."

Mara agrees that their relationship is a benefit to the team's success.

"Honestly, there’s not that much difference," Mara said. "She treats all the players equally and she’s also a wonderful coach. She’s just really good at coaching all of us and it’s been a lot of fun."

With Jane's expertise and past as a setter, it's easy to see how Mara adopted the same skills to be the so-called quarterback of the Spartans' offense.

In the complicated and fast-paced sport, the setter has to have a feel for opposing blockers and a knowledge of the tendencies of an opponent in order to deliver a pass to one of several hitters in order to produce a kill.

Occasionally, a setter will choose deception against an opponent and perform a dump, where they'll read the defense and essentially spike the ball instead of assisting a hitter.

Those skills are learned through years of practice, film study and a sense of the flow of a game.

Skills that have Mara one of the state's assist leaders and, along with talented hitters, why Athens Academy needs just one more best-of-five matches for a state title.

"She’s one of my favorite setters and just phenomenal," said senior outside hitter Peyton Thomas, whose 330 kills lead Athens Academy. "I’ve been with her since the eighth grade when I played club with her and I just have that hitter-setter connection with her. I think that really benefits our connection."

Now in their third year together, Jane and Mara rarely contemplate their coach-player or mother-daughter relationship while on the court.

But when someone gets a glimpse of Jane practicing with the team, it's easy to see where Mara gets her talent.

"She’s always been very talented and keeps improving every year, so it’s been really fun because she can do a lot of things, adjust to a lot of things and she just knows the game really well," Jane said of her daughter. "It’s just been smooth and we’ve both respected our boundaries."