The ball sailed toward the back of the gym, well out after the powerful spike, and
Jennifer Morgan turned to the bench and told her coach, “See?”Wanda Watts didn’t know exactly how to
respond to the South Rowan senior besides saying, “Keep hitting it!” For South
to have a successful season, Watts knows the 6-foot returning all-county performer has to
lead the Raiders at the net.
“Jennifer Morgan needs her
confidence back right now. She’s afraid that if she hits it real hard it will go out
or hit the net,” Watts said. “She can place it wherever she wants to, it’s
just a matter of hitting it hard enough so the other team can’t get a hand on
it.”
Morgan showed last week against
North Rowan that she can be a dominating presence, snuffing several potential kills and
blasting some of her own. But the South attack faltered down the stretch and the Cavaliers
won, leaving the Raiders 1-1 for the week as they finished off their nonconference
schedule with a 3-4 record.
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SET FOR THE CPC: The Raiders play
host to Mount Tabor and West Forsyth this week to start the 4A Central Piedmont Conference
season, and they’ll do so with a new look.
After starting the season with a
two-setter attack, Watts tabbed Meredith Bost as the lone Raider setter.
Morgan Andrews had shared that
setter role before missing a few games last week, and Watts liked what she saw with one
setter and elected to stick with Bost for the South assists.
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helping hands: No matter
who’s on the schedule, the Raiders are guaranteed to see some pretty good competition
at least once a week.
Watts has a group of adults come
in to scrimmage the Raiders. A few South teachers and some men from YMCA leagues make up
the opposition, and a few of the adults even have college volleyball experience.
“It’s better practice
than playing against the junior varsity,” Watts said. “The girls really can see
the difference with game situations.”
The Hornets claimed their first
win of the season one day after they suffered their biggest loss.
Returning all-county performer
Sherree Gillespie decided to leave the volleyball team after just four games, creating a
big hole in the middle of the Salisbury attack.
“We have to now step up every
one of their games a lot more than what they did before. We can’t have any let
downs,” Hornets head coach Bob Beiter said of replacing the 6-foot hitter. He brought
up freshmen Ticora Jones and Jamie Seay from the junior varsity to fill the roster spot.
Perhaps most disheartening for the
Hornets were the signs of life they showed recently. Salisbury lost its fourth straight
game to open the season against High Point, but Beiter said the 3-2 defeat was far and
away the team’s best match of the season. Better, even, than Thursday’s sweep of
Lexington that moved the Hornets to 1-4 overall and 1-1 in the 2A Central Carolina
Conference.
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by the way … Salisbury’s
schedule did a flip-flop this week.
Beiter’s team thought it
played at East Davidson today and played host to a tough Ledford team Thursday. Then the
powers-that-be let Beiter know about Salisbury’s Thursday match at Davie County,
which didn’t make it onto the Hornets schedule.
Whoops.
Now the Hornets will play East
Davidson Tuesday, Davie Wednesday and Ledford Thursday. On top of losing Gillespie and not
being able to practice over the Labor Day weekend, Beiter isn’t too enthused about
the change.
“Going against three tough
teams, we might take some bumps this week,” Beiter said. “But we’ll do our
best.”
Falcons head coach Susan Drye had
a message for her team after some early-season struggles.
Relax.
It’s paid dividends, too.
With a win today at Piedmont, West would move to .500 overall and in the 3A South Piedmont
Conference. The Falcons currently stand 3-4, 2-3.
“The girls are just starting
to try to enjoy themselves instead of being so into winning and losing. I’m just
trying to get them to enjoy the game,” Drye said. “They’re so
goal-oriented, they want to win. You’re supposed to win, but you also want to have
fun while doing it. It’s been a struggle.”
Much of that has to do with the
success enjoyed by the Falcons in their other endeavors. Basketball players Kari Schenk,
Sara Pieper, Danielle Scearce and Kristen McNeely led West to a second-place finish in the
SPC last year. In the spring, the soccer team won the conference and advanced to the
second round of the state playoffs for the first time with more than half the volleyball
roster on the field.
But more than anything else, the
girls are volleyball players in the fall, and the volleyball court is where they want to
be successful right now.
“It’s from past years,
too,” Drye said. ”We were not real great last year and they’re ready to win
and have a successful season.”
Maybe they were just trying to get
it all out of their system at once.
That’s all Sandy Basinger can
hope for.
The Mustangs did a little extra
running in practice last week after a disastrous loss to Northwest Cabarrus. East missed
14 serves, didn’t hit the ball, didn’t set the ball, didn’t kill the ball
… “It was like we took out both guns and shot ourselves in the feet before we
started,” the East head coach said.
Basinger’s Mustangs
weren’t playing poorly before that loss and are 4-3 overall and 3-2 in the 3A South
Piedmont Conference. But she’s still looking for that missing element that can move
the Mustangs from average to above average, and that might require some tinkering with the
lineup this week.
“We need to communicate more
and move as one instead of six individual people,” Basinger said. “It’s
real easy for everyone to get frustrated with their own games. The hitters can’t hit
because the setter’s not getting them sets. The setter’s not setting well
because they’re not getting good passes. It’s not just one person, they just
couldn’t get anything all together.”
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Hurry up and wait: One of the
reasons Basinger thought East struggled was due to odd scheduling.
The Mustangs opened their season
with six games in 10 days, then had a long layoff before facing Northwest.
“At least two games a week is
fine, but any time you play one a week you can’t get into a very good flow,”
Basinger said. We were used to playing three a week, then all of a sudden it’s been
four, five days since we’ve played any competition.”
East faces Kannapolis today and
Concord Thursday, and the Mustangs will play two games a week through the remainder of
their schedule except for a third game added Oct. 6 against North Rowan.
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The volleyball notebook appears
Tuesdays. |
Steve Hanf