The prep volleyball notebook …Any
volleyball coach will bemoan problems at the net.
Spiking, blocking, bad sets — if your team
doesn’t have a strong presence up front, it probably won’t do too well.
But problems with the net? That’s a whole
other story.
East Rowan head coach Sandy Basinger got an
unwelcome surprise Thursday with Concord’s varsity and JV squads coming to Mustang
Country for a 3A South Piedmont Conference match. The standards that hold the net in place
were damaged in the gym floor and the net had nothing to stand on.
No net Thursday, no match. No net Friday and
Saturday, no practice. And it just so happens that East (5-3 overall, 4-2 SPC) gets to
play league leaders Sun Valley and Central Cabarrus this week.
“The top two teams in the conference, what a
wonderful time for it to happen,” Basinger
said. “The kids are frustrated, I’m frustrated. It’s been a really tough
week for us and they feel like they don’t have any homecourt advantage. I wish I
could fault them for feeling that way but I’d probably feel that way if I was
playing.”
Basinger hopes the net will be fixed by the end of
the week, adding that Cecil the Maintenance Man can fix anything and has helped her squad
through net problems before. In the
meantime, the Mustangs have made alternate arrangements. They’re practicing at the
YMCA and will take on Sun Valley Tuesday at Catawba College. The game Thursday,
mercifully, is at Central.
“We’ll see how they respond,” a
resigned Basinger said. “It’ll be character building if nothing else.”
The Raiders
are down a player for the moment but happy it’s not for the season.
Senior Jennifer Morgan, South’s big hitter,
rolled her ankle in warmups for Thursday’s match against West Forsyth and pressed on despite the pain.
She eventually had the injury looked at and
Raiders head coach Wanda Watts said doctors called it just short of a fracture. Morgan had
the ankle braced and has been taking pain medication while waiting to get back in the
lineup.
“Hopefully by the end of the week, Thursday
when we play West, she’ll be up to playing,” Watts said. “I don’t want to push it and take the
risk of hurting it worse.”
Sophomore Brittney Gaddy will step up in
Morgan’s place.
“She’s coming along at the net. In the
middle she’s looking pretty good, and her blocking against Tabor was
impressive,” said Watts.
Her team stands 3-6 overall, 0-2 in the 4A Central
Piedmont Conference with a tough league assignment tonight against R.J. Reynolds.
It went in the books as just another loss, but
when the Falcons rebounded from two games down against Sun Valley Thursday, they probably
played their best match of the season.
“I was a little disappointed at first, I
thought, ‘Oh well, here goes another one,’” West head coach Susan Drye said. “Then it got real
exciting in the third and fourth games.
“I was really proud they came back,
especially against a team like Sun Valley.”
West (3-6 overall, 2-5 3A South Piedmont
Conference) rallied to tie the match at two games apiece and claimed a 13-9 lead in the
fifth game to set the stage for an upset over one of the league’s stronger teams.
Then setter Kari Schenk’s eye got in the way
of a teammate’s elbow when the two went for the same ball. It went south from there
— West got the loss and Schenk got nine stitches just below her eye.
“I was kind of hoping we’d beat them, it
would boost our confidence level that we can beat anybody,” Drye said.
That confidence could help West’s record
climb closer to .500. The Falcons played a great match Thursday, but just two days earlier
against a weaker Piedmont team lost in four games.
“When we came out and played Sun Valley like
we did, you expect to beat Piedmont,” Drye
said. “We come out stronger against stronger teams and I think we came out against
Piedmont expecting to win and they got the best of us. That was one of our disappointing
games.”
With one key league loss already dogging them, the Cavaliers enter an important stretch of games in the 2A
Central Carolina Conference.
North plays host to High Point Central Thursday and East Davidson next Thursday, with all
three teams currently in second place.
The Cavs suffered their only league loss last week
to No. 1 Ledford and can’t drop too many more, as the CCC gets only two state playoff
berths.
“The next week will be pretty key as far as
finishing in the conference goes,” Hester
said.
For extra motivation, North welcomes High Point
with the memory of a season-ending loss to the Bison last year. It dropped the Cavs from a
second-place tie to sole possession of third, one spot away from state.
It’s getting mighty lonely for head coach Bob
Beiter on the Hornets bench.
One week after senior Sherree Gillespie left the
team, senior Sucy DeLeon also departed, leaving the Hornets with just eight varsity
players seeing action Monday night against North Rowan.
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The prep volleyball notebook appears Tuesdays in the Post. |
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