South Range bests Bulldogs in four sets to stay unbeaten
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BEAVER TOWNSHIP -- South Range maintained its undefeated record Tuesday, but the Raiders' 11th win of the season did not come easy.
After taking the first set of their Northeast 8 Conference (NE8) match vs. visiting Lakeview, the Raiders recovered from a stiff response by the Bulldogs, who hung tough but ultimately went down in four competitive sets to South Range.
"Lakeview is just so good. They're so well coached, they have such great tradition," South Range head coach T.J. Irons said. "When you play them, you're in for a fight, and we told our girls that. The big thing was that we knew there was gonna be side-out volleyball. And then usually, if you can get a couple against somebody on the team, they'll give in, but Lakeview wasn't gonna do it tonight. But overall, I was just so pumped just at how hard our girls played. And a lot of times they were just doing it like they were business-like. They were doing what they were supposed to do when they were supposed to do it, and then good things kept happening."
Lakeview, as it did in each set Tuesday, carved out a 7-4 lead early before the Raiders found their groove and retook the advantage. The Bulldogs tied the score at 16 with a kill by Anna Haynie, who battled above the net with Anna Toy and Lily Weaver throughout the evening.
The Raiders, however, rattled off six consecutive points, forcing Lakeview to use its pair of timeouts. The breaks, while briefly effective, could not completely halt the momentum of South Range, which earned the opening-set win 25-18.
South Range's comeback came at a much later point in the second set, during which the Raiders found themselves in a five-point deficit before rallying to tie it at 19. Unlike the first set, though, Lakeview came through in the end, when it tied the set at 24 and, a little later, won three straight points to take the set 27-25.
"I felt like that was probably the set that we played with the least amount of energy," Irons said. "I felt like we weren't really flying around as much as we were early on."
Down 13-9 in the third set, the Raiders won five points in a row and closed even stronger than they had to end the first set, winning the final five points to earn a 25-19 set win.
Similarly, an effective South Range timeout slowed the Bulldogs' roll after four straight points to make it 14-10 in the fourth set. After the timeout, the Raiders won 15 of the final 21 points as Lakeview, which found itself on the unfortunate end of several calls, became increasingly frustrated with the officiating en route to a 25-20 set loss.
"I think we played very well," Lakeview head coach Heather Kiser said. "I think we were fighting a lot of things that were out of our control. We had some adversity going on. I think that we just put the mid system a little too much, but I'm proud of my girls to go out and fight and take a set from them. It just shows them that we can fight."
The Bulldogs, who were looking for their third straight win Tuesday, slipped to 8-3 on the season and 4-2 in the NE8 with the loss. Lakeview visits Poland on Thursday as it begins the second round of conference play.
Meanwhile, South Range improved to 11-0 overall and 6-0 in the league. The Raiders are at Cardinal Mooney on Thursday before resuming NE8 play at home vs. Poland next Tuesday.
"My assistant coach and I work very hard to lead this team. But the truth is our team is player-led as much as it's coach-led," Irons said. "We get into that situation where we start talking about being undefeated and things like that -- it's not our main goal. We're proud that we're there. We're pretty excited that we kind of sent a message of being undefeated. But the girls are the ones that are pushing each other.
"I know we get up for teams when they're undefeated. We know that everybody is gonna wanna beat us, and we're gonna get everybody's best shot."