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ROANOKE - Pulaski County High School’s volleyball team fought hard against arguably the best team in the River Ridge District, Hidden Valley, but fell to the Titans, 3-0 (12-25, 7-25, 6-25) on the road Tuesday.
“I feel like my kids were more ready to play tonight than they have been in the past few weeks,” said Cougars coach Ashley Surber. “We had a lot of good defense. We have to work on putting the ball down. I was impressed with how my girl’s kept fighting, even though they were down.”
The Cougars (7-6, 0-3) played a hard fought first game. The score would be tied 1-1 early in the first game after a Maddy Chitwood kill. The Titans (12-0, 3-0) would rally off five straight points, as Liz Burke got two of them, while Rachel Thomas and Sarah Church had one a piece. Samantha Klostermann had an ace serve in the rally.
That run wouldn’t keep the Cougars down. With the score 10-2, the Cougars rallied off eight of the next 12 points to close to within 14-10. The Titans though would counter with their own run, scoring 11 of the final 13 points and capture the first game.
“Hidden Valley’s kids can put the ball down,” Surber said. “Overall we had a lot of good rallies with them that kept the point going. We just have to work on finishing the point.”
Hidden Valley’s run continued in the beginning of the second game. The Titans rallied off eight straight, with three service aces from Samantha Ringer. Burke and Thomas added a kill apiece, and three Cougar errors contributed to the early 8-0 Titans lead.
A Titans error granted the Cougars their first point of the game and some momentum with it. Maddy Chitwood and Tamar Smith both got kills and a Titan error contributed to scoring three of the next four points and tightened things up at 9-4.
Once again, Hidden Valley answered the challenge with Sarah Church, who drove three straight kills in a row. She would have four kills and an ace serve during the game. The kills gave the Titans much needed home momentum, as the Cougars would only score three more points in the second before dropping it 25-7.
“We seem to start off sluggish, no matter what game in the match it is,” Surber said. “It seems like we find ourselves a hole and we have to dig out of. We start a third of the way through the match and never catch up.”
Once again, the Titans would go on yet another huge run in the third game. With the score 3-1, Hidden Valley scored seven of the next nine points to take a 10-3 lead. The ace serve plagued the Cougars in the game, especially Ringer, who had four in the game and nine in the match. The Titans had 17 total ace serves in the match.
There were many times when the Cougars and Titans exchanged possession over and over. However, the Cougars would be on the losing end most of the time.
“The played harder tonight than they have the past few games,” Surber said. “The score doesn’t show how hard they played because they had a few long rallies. We got out powered.”
In the end, the long rallies and point runs wore down the Cougars, while the power hitting and ace serves by Hidden Valley allowed them to extend their third game lead into a victory.
Junior Marlena Morrison was 10-10 on her hits with 3 kills, and two blocks (one ace block). Seven digs. On defense, Senior Ashley Burleson had 20 digs and she was 14 for 19 on passing. Fellow senior Lauren Stanley was 5-for-5 on her hits with three kills.
After two tough road district contests, the Cougars will return home for their next match up and will play in district against Blacksburg.
“I haven’t seen them this year,” Surber said. “I’ve been told they’ve improved from last year. “They did take the only game off of Hidden Valley this year. We just have to be ready to play them.”
10-6-09
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