MT. ULLA — Problems from the service line.
Breakdowns in communication. Trouble putting games away.North Rowan’s volleyball team left West Rowan with a
three-game win Tuesday night, proving in the process that work remains for both squads.
But the Cavaliers looked sharp when they had to in claiming a 15-8, 15-10, 15-5 victory in
their first match of the season.
“West usually has a pretty good team,” the Cavs’ Megan Honeycutt said. “But we passed
pretty good the first and third games. The second game we lost our composure some but we
got it back together.”
North exploded to strong starts in the final two
games after both teams felt each other out through a long see-saw affair in the first.
Carrie Powers’ ace gave North its biggest lead at 10-7 and LaTasha Pharr closed the
game with another serve between two Falcons, then did a little dance to celebrate her
clinching ace.
The Cavaliers rode a wave of momentum to a 9-1
lead in the second game as West had trouble returning serves from Honeycutt and Ashley
Bowie. West’s Kari Schenk scored an ace to stop the bleeding at 9-2, but five more
quick points had the Cavs poised for the blowout win.
Then North served into the net and West collected
its third point. Another net serve led to a Sara Pieper kill, then another bad North serve
set up Abbi Heilig’s kill and a Cav error to close the gap to 14-6.
For the fourth straight time, North served its
shot at a win into the net, and West’s Pieper went back to the service line and
reeled off four straight points to get the Falcons into double digits and start worrying
North head coach Tricia Hester.
“They did a really good job keeping the
pressure on us,” Hester said. “Any time you come
back from 14-2, you’re doing something right.”
“It was frustrating for me more because we
missed four serves,”
she added. “We
didn’t even give ourselves a chance to score, and that made me very unhappy.”
Finally, for the first time in a long time, a
North player — Kristen Kobylus — got a ball over, and Pharr slammed a kill for
the win.
“The second game we came back and I told
them, ‘You guys must have really wanted something to come back like that,’”
West head coach Susan Drye said. “But it wasn’t enough.”
And it wasn’t enough to rally West in the
third game, either. North scored the first five points, held on as West rallied to within
5-4 and then scored the next six points to take a commanding 10-4 lead. Carrie Powers, who
led the Cavaliers with 12 points, closed out the match from the service line.
“We really wanted it,” Powers said of North’s attitude in the season-opener.
“We were going for everything, diving for all of them.”
But one of West’s biggest problems was that
North wasn’t challenged on a lot of balls that were hit long or wide.
“It seemed like every time they hit it they
were hitting it out,”
Drye said.
Especially on the serve.
“Last night we got 90 percent of our serves
in. Tonight it was 45 or
50 percent,” Heilig
said, referring to West’s 15-11, 15-12, 15-12 win against South Rowan. “The
whole attitude was different.
“If one person got down, the whole team got
down. We come into each game pumped up, but one bad move and they had five points on us
and we were down.”
Honeycutt paced the North attack with five kills,
while Pharr, Kobylus and LaToya Tucker had four each. Powers added 18 assists for the Cavaliers of the Class 2A Central Carolina Conference, who
play host to East Rowan tonight.
Schenk posted 16 assists and led West with 10
points. The Falcons open their 3A South Piedmont Conference season Thursday at Harding. |
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