The Washington Lady Blue Lion volleyball teams swept three matches from visiting Western Brown Wednesday, Sept. 4 at Washington High School.
In the freshman match, Washington improved to 3-1 with a 25-21, 21-25, 25-23 win over the Broncos.
Washington’s j-v team upped its record to 4-1 overall with a 25-20, 25-18 over Western Brown.
In the varsity match, Washington rallied from two sets to one down to win, 3-2.
Scores of the sets were 25-23, 22-25, 22-25, 25-8 and 15-8.
Washington is now 5-3 overall on the season with a match at former SCOL opponent Clinton-Massie Thursday evening.
The teams were playing very closely-contested sets until Washington made a breakthrough in the fourth set, rolling to the one-sided win.
The momentum from that win carried over into the fifth and deciding set of the match.
Rayana Burns led Washington with 22 kills. Brittney Wilson had six kills and Emily Semler had four.
Olivia Wayne and Halli Wall each had five service aces. Wilson had three aces.
In digs, Aaralyne Estep led with 29. Wayne had 18 and Burns and Wall each had 17. Wilson had 10 digs.
“That was a lot of defense for us tonight,” Washington head coach Ashley DeAtley said.
Burns led with five solo blocks and she also had two block assists.
Wilson had two solo blocks and one block assist.
Wall had 30 set assists.
“Tonight we started off really flat,” DeAtley said. “We were coming off of (the three matches on Saturday). We knew everything was going to be kind of slow.
“We pushed for the girls to push our offense to be quicker,” DeAtley said. “We really didn’t light up until about the third (set). I was telling the girls that we needed to stop number seven. They had a big middle and she took control of the game. She did a lot of good things and we could not…she’s a great hitter. She’d go on the outside and hit the line, then she’d drill us in the middle.
“We couldn’t get our hands on a ball to block her at first,” DeAtley said. “When we did, our offense came alive. Rayana Burns just stepped right in and was able to speed things up. That was huge for us tonight to be able to push through and come out with the win.
“I was proud of the girls,” DeAtley said. “They never gave up. They recovered a lot of balls, because Western Brown was really scrappy.
“We didn’t miss as many serves in the fourth (set),” DeAtley said. “We were digging balls because we knew where their hitters were going. We moved Halli Wall closer to the line. We pushed her up for more tips and that kind of put them off-balance, that they weren’t scoring off the things they were in the previous three (sets). Our blocks started being on and everything sort of blossomed for us.”
Also on Wednesday, Miami Trace’s varsity volleyball team defeated Clinton-Massie, 3-0. Scores of the sets were: 25-10, 25-16 and 25-17.
Other local sports results from Wednesday: in girls soccer, Southeastern defeated Washington, 7-0; in boys soccer, Washington tied Southeastern, 3-3; in tennis, Clinton-Massie edged Miami Trace, 3-2 and Logan Elm defeated Washington, 4-1.
