LINCOLN -- Pea Ridge swept Lincoln (25-19, 25-15, 25-12) in 4A-1 volleyball action on Sept. 3.
Lincoln started strong, jumping out to an early 8-3 lead in game one. Kendra Cummings had an ace and kill and Emily Dayberry recorded back-to-back kills, the second coming from Lexington Dobbs' set but from that point on the game and match swung in Pea Ridge's favor.
One area Lincoln struggled with was receiving serves. Ten Pea Ridge serves went unreturned in game one. Madison McGuire served the Lady Blackhawks into the lead with a trio of aces turning a 9-8 deficit into an 11-8 Pea Ridge lead. Brandi Hager closed out game one, 25-19, with a cross-court kill on the front line for Pea Ridge.
Pea Ridge produced 9 more aces in game two, winning 25-15 on McGuire's serve.
Game three began with intense competition. Cummings opened the scoring with a block-kill, then added a second kill followed by an ace to keep Lincoln in front, 4-3. Pea Ridge countered with Hager's kill. Both teams then combined on a succession of hitting and service errors leaving the score deadlocked at 9-9. Pea Ridge once more revived their attack to close out the game and match on a 16-3 run. Laura Socha contributed 3 aces during the run.
"One of our goals is as a team to known as the best serving team in the conference," said Pea Ridge coach Jessica Woods. "It used to be just get it over. Now, we're trying to serve more aggressively and it's starting to pay off."
"There are tons of things, still a lot of stuff to work on. This is our first year, we'll just get better," said Lincoln coach Stephanie Howard, referring the resurrection of the program which took a one-year hiatus in 2014 because there weren't enough players to field a varsity team.
Sports on 09/16/2015