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Mountaineers finish off Hornets

Photo: John Berry

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There were two solid battles — a comeback effort in game two from Madison County that just fell short, and a good back-and-forth in the middle of game three — but outside of that, the Mountaineers simply out served Orange County. With Grace Fox and Makenna Santinga piling up the aces and the Hornets struggling with service aces, Madison was able to roll to a 3-1 victory, 25-24, 23-25, 25-16, 25-14.

 

“We’re a young group, but we mesh, we communicate,” said Mountaineers coach Carrie Brown. “That was something we had last year, but we’ve grown in a better communicating team this year.”

 

Madison opened up an early 6-2 lead in game one and forced an Orange timeout at 13-5. The pace stayed there and while the Hornets were able to go from down 16-8 to down 17-12, that was as close as they could get in the first set with the Mountaineers thriving at the service line and capitalizing on Orange errors to go up 1-0.

 

“We work on spot serving, spin, no-spin, and so it was good to see the girls put it all together in the first game,” Brown said.

 

The drama in the match came in game two where Madison went from up 2-0 to down 10-2. From there it was a long climb getting back into things. The Mountaineers closed the gap at 17-16, getting to within a point before Orange broke off a 6-0 run to take a 22-16 lead.

 

“We were moving well there, communicating doing all the things we should,” said Orange coach Breanna Hoover. “It was good to see, beautiful really, because it a was a big difference from Tuesday. These girls did a great job based on what happened Tuesday. So it’s a new game for us. They came back today and showed me a lot more.”

 

While Madison came back to make it close again at 24-23, the Hornets finished the job and tied things up at 1-1. However, the momentum from the end of game two carried over into the third set.

 

“I think they way we won in the first set led to us playing around a bit in the second,” Fox said. “In the third we knew we had to kick it back into high gear, couldn’t mess around.”

 

In that pivotal third, the Mountaineers built an 8-3 lead to start. The Hornets were able to slowly work back into things, getting to within two points of the lead at 14-12, but a 5-1 push by Madison gave the home team a comfortable margin to work with. And the theme in all three games that the Mountaineers won was that they did no squander any large leads. Madison took a 2-1 lead with the 25-16 win and went into the fourth game feeling confident.

 

“During practice we’re given spots to serve to and during the games we try and go the same thing, hit it to a spot,” Fox said of Madison’s serving dominance on the night. “Even if you’re not exactly hitting it, (as a server) you have confidence knowing that you can or have in practice. It’s a security blanket. It’s a mental thing… I was pretty happy, I have a little bit of a whacky serve that’s not great form wise but it works because it’s got some top spin and dives.”

 

Just like games one and three, game four saw Madison go up early to the tune of a 10-3 lead and an Orange time out. From there it was even to make things 19-12, but the damage was done and the Mountaineers closed the game out with an ace at 25-14.

 

“We just have to work on not getting down mentally when we’re down in games and relying one or two girls to do everything,” Hoover said. “We had 14 service errors and we can’t have that. You can’t win a game where you give 14 points to someone and it’s something we’ve worked on every day but we’ll have to keep working on that.”

 

On the night, Fox had eight aces with eight digs. Santinga finished with 23 assists, five aces and three kills and 15 digs. Sarah Good led the Madison attack with 10 kills. Abigail Tanner and Allie Burbridge had three kills each. Kaylan Boone had nine digs.

 

For Orange Donea brooks finished with 17 assists while Lucy Hay had 14 service points to go with six kills. Laine Harrington chipped in nine digs a trio of blocks and five kills.
The Hornets (0-2) travel to Spotsylvania while the Mountaineers (2-0) Luray with both matches set for Tuesday night.

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