Coming of its first regular season loss since the 2013 season, Madison County went into its match with Orange County hoping to rectify some of the woes from its four set loss with Page on Tuesday. Suffice it to say, the Mountaineers came out swinging. Thanks in large part to its strength in the service department, Madison cruised in the first set on the road against the Hornets, fought through some adversity in the second, and then finished strong in the third to cruise to a 3-0 win, 25-8, 25-21, 25-15.
“When we get our serves in we tend to do really well,” said first year Madison coach Carrie Brown. “Our serve game is our bread and butter. We switched up our defense the day before the season started, we’re running a hybrid defense and something that I made up but we’re really comfortable with it (right now).”
The Mountaineers might have just two starters back from last year, Jeana Grace Kelliher and Alexa Waga, but it certainly did not show early on. Madison rolled out to a 7-1 start before taking a commanding 15-5 lead with Orange unable to handle the serve with ease, much less deal with the Mountaineers’ front line attack. With a 10-3 run to close out the first set, Madison went up 1-0.
“We had a lot of good passes from the back row, a lot of good sets and our attacks were just really aggressive,” Kelliher said. “I think we lost our intensity a bit in the second game but once we saw we needed to pick it back up we did so and in the third game.”
The second set did go differently. The Mountaineers built a 5-1 lead but the Hornets come to life to tie things up at 11-11. From there it was back-and-forth all the way to 19-18 with Madison out in front. But familiar troubles settled in for Orange soon after.
“We weren’t getting our serves in, our passes weren’t on and so we couldn’t get anything to mesh tonight,” said Orange coach Brianna Hoover of her team’s struggles. “My message in the second set was getting them to push each other. I told them that I was disappointed we were playing with our heads down. You can’t do that, you have to stay competitive. Make (the other team) earn it. I think we did that in the second game, but not in the first.”
Madison closed the second set with a 6-3 run to take a 2-0 lead and set up the sweep, with its hustle defense in Brown’s new system setting the tone.
“When you play defense — and we work on it all the time in practice, the footwork, everything — when you play defense you don’t lose,” Brown said. “Defense wins ball games.”
The third set was close early with the Mountaineers leading 6-4 before going on a 10-3 run. Up 23-13, the match was already in hand when the Hornets mounted one last push, but miscues at the end of the contest gave Madison the contest at 25-15.
On the night, Waga had nine kills and also threw in three blocks. Kelliher finished with eight kills and had four aces and five digs. Sam Breeden had nine digs to go with three aces. Megan Shifflett had 10 assists while Rachel Boone had eight.
For Orange, Danielle Mawyer led the way with 10 kills and three blocks. Laine Harrington contributed eight kills. Finishing just behind was Jordan Stout who threw in six kills.
The Hornets (0-2) host Culpeper on Tuesday at 7 p.m. while Madison (1-1) travels to Luray for a third straight road contest on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.
