Cougars end season in first round of RRD tournament

By Cody Dalton
sports@southwesttimes.com

CHRISTIANSBURG – The Lady Cougar volleyball team finished off their 2009-2010 campaign on Monday in the first round of the River Ridge District tournament against Christiansburg. After winning a huge opening game in the match, the Cougars lost three straight games and the momentum to the Demons on the road, 3-1 (25-21, 21-25, 14-25, 12-25).

Pulaski (8-13, 1-9) came out strong in the opening game against Christiansburg (11-9, 4-6). After trailing 6-3, Marlena Morrison rallied the Cougars. She would drive down two kills and the Demons hit a ball out of bounds to tie the game 6-6.

However, Christiansburg would mount their own rally after being tied. Ashton Moran would get three aces and Emily Davis would get two kills to put the Demons up 11-6 and force coach Ashley Surber to take a timeout.

“I told them during the timeout that they have to play ball and can’t give up,” Surber said. “They have nothing to lose. They just need to go ahead and give 100%.”

The Cougars remained down in the game until the score was 14-10 in favor of the Demons. Pulaski would rally off six straight points. Two of them would come from kills from sophomore Jette Wade and the other four would be Demon errors.

That 16-14 lead marked a crucial turning point in the game, as the Cougars were able to hold their own with the Demons. The score would remain close and was eventually tied at 19-19.

Senior Lauren Stanley would give her team the end of game advantage. After a Demon mistake, she would block Davis on a spike and then drove the rebounding volleyball down for a point. That gave the Cougars a two point cushion, which they used to take the first game.

“I felt really good about the first game,” said Cougars coach Ashley Surber. “The kids were ready to play in the first game. We just didn’t execute in the next three.”

The Cougars and Demons fought tightly again in the second game. Pulaski would hold the lead for the most part of the game. At one point, they held a four-point lead at the 10-6 mark.

A controversial call at the midpoint of the game though slowed down the game and potentially changed the momentum. After a serve by Emily Davis was ruled in by the line judge, the head judge overruled that call and the Cougars were awarded the point for the service error.

That slight break in the game seemed to stop the Cougars growing momentum and the Demons capitalized. Tiffany Blassingame and Katelyn Kast would both get kills and the Cougars had two mistakes, as Christiansburg took the 12-11 lead.

Things stayed tight throughout until the end of the game, when Christiansburg opened up the gap. With the score 20-18, the Cougars would commit a service error and Blassingame would get a kill to make the lead four at 22-18. That gap held tight and the Demons won the second game, 25-21.

Both teams looked as if they would continue to play tough all the way through the end of their third straight game, but the Cougars fell apart at the beginning of the game. With the score tied 3-3, Christiansburg would thrive off the serve of Lara Mash.

They would score five straight points, including two kills from Emily Quesinberry, one from Kast, an ace block from Moran, and an ace from Mash. That small burst to start the third game gave Christiansburg the home court momentum.

Pulaski got back to within 8-7 with Amanda Salinas on serve. She would have two aces and the Demons committed two mistakes in the run. That would be as close as they would get though, as the Christiansburg lead continued to grow and eventually led to the 25-14 third game win.

Down 2-1 in the match, coach Ashley Surber tried to fire up her team before the start of the fourth game. It looked as if it would work, as the Cougars played tough at 4-3 early in the game. However, the Demons once again hit a rally and scored six straight points. Blassingame had two kills and Quesinberry had a kill and an ace in the run.

That rally would doom the Cougars in what would be their final match of the season. They would only get to within six points and eventually dropped the game 25-12.

“We gave up way too many points off of running balls on the floor,” Surber said. “We shanked a lot of balls that we’ve been passing up all year long. That killed us.”

Sophomore Jette Wade finished with six kills and an ace block in the game. Marlena Morrison added five kills and an ace, while Maddy Chitwood added two kills and an ace block. Amanda Salinas led the Cougars on serve with three aces and pitched in two kills as well.

The Cougars finish the season at 8-13 overall, which is just a game worse than their 9-12 record from last year. Ashley Surber remarked on her team’s change from her first season to the second and looked ahead to next year.

“I feel like talent wise we were better,” Surber said. “We just didn’t execute at key times this year when we needed to. I feel like we were a very young team this year and that may have hurt us in the long run. We’ll have a lot of talent returning from this year to next year. Hopefully, we’ll have a bigger turnout for tryouts next fall. The more talent that we get, the better we will be.”

(11-3-09)