Lady Flyers Face Northampton for Ninth Place After Splitting a Pair at Nationals
The Sandhills Community College volleyball team outlasted Harrisburg Area CC 25-14, 25-16, 21-25, 22-25 and 15-13 in a Thursday afternoon consolation match at the NJCAA Division III National Championship in Rochester, MN.
Earlier, the No. 7 seeded Lady Flyers fell behind 10-1 in the first set against No. 10 Finger Lakes CC and never fully recovered before falling 12-25, 23-25 and 23-25.
Coach Alicia Riggan's squad (22-15) will play in the match for ninth place against Northampton (PA) (19-2) at noon on Friday.
"The girls have to be able to take what we did today, the good and the bad, and be ready for Northampton," the coach said by phone Thursday evening. "They're a solid team and it's going to be a good match-up."
Play continued on Thursday with the tournament's top four seeds seeing their first action in quarterfinal matches at 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. on the adjacent courts at the Rochester Regional Sports Center.
Three early aces by Finger Lakes (28-10), the No. 1 team in Division III in that department by a wide margin, put the Lady Flyers on their heels from the start. Three aces in a row helped stake the Lakers to a 6-0 advantage in the second set before the Flyers rallied.
A pair of aces by Olivia Barlowe, and kills by Dajsha Fields, Mackenzie Swett and JaLasia Ray helped the Flyers close the gap until a kill by Keke Lawrence tied it up at 23-23. The Lakers scored the next two points to take a 2-0 lead. The third set was more of the same with the Flyers, coming up short by two points again as the Lakers completed the sweep.
In the consolation match against a Harrisburg Area team that was swept by Dutchess (NY), it was the Flyers jumping out to a 16-9 lead as Lawrence converted her first six swings into kills. They won the first two sets by comfortable margins before the Hawks rallied to tie the match at 2-2.
The team from Pennsylvania led 12-9 in the fifth set before the Flyers rallied to take a 13-12 lead on the sixth service ace of the match by L'Asia Jackson. Moments later, leading 14-13, the match ended on a double-hit by one of the Hawks.
The Flyers recorded a season-high total of 17 aces, including six by Alyssa Maragelis and three by Lannah Huneycutt. Lawrence matched her season-high with 18 kills on 27 attacks. Fields was credited with 11 kills.
The 38 assists by Huneycutt were also a season-high. The leaders in digs were Jackson with 21 and Huneycutt with 11.
Northampton won 18 matches in a row after losing its season opener. The Spartans lost to Fulton-Montgomery (NY) on Thursday before sweeping Monroe-Bronx (NY) to set up the match against the Flyers.
The last time the two teams met was in 2017 when the team from Bethlehem, PA prevailed in five sets at the district tournament held in Bethlehem.
C. Bergmann