MEDORA
The Crothersville Tigers volleyball team picked up its first win of the season with a 25-20, 25-14, 25-11 win Thursday night at Medora.
In the first set the Tigers held a 17-8 lead following a kill by Maddie Riley before the Hornets took advantage of attacking errors by the Tigers to tie the match at 20-all.
CHS took a 23-20 lead on back-to-back aces by Brittany Clem then gained set point on a passing error by the Hornets.
Tigers coach Linda Luedeman said the strong finish was needed.
“It did a lot for their confidence,” she said. “We needed this win tonight. They actually looked like they were having fun out there. We’re excited about that.”
The Tigers held a 16-9 lead in the second set before Katie Stewart executed three straight kills to bring the Hornets within 16-12, but the Tigers closed out the set on a 9-2 run.
The visitors scored the first four points in the third set to lead all the way. Katrina Christian’s second kill of the set gave the visitors a 10-3 lead, another kill by Lacey Hall set the score 14-3 and the Tigers continued to pull away.
Riley topped the Tigers at the net making 11 of 12 with five kills and converted all 11 serve attempts with two aces.
“We ran our 6-2 offense tonight,” Luedeman said. “They’re getting more comfortable with that. We do have to work on staying out of the net. We have a tall front row at times, but we get in the net, so we’re going to keep working on that.”
Hornets coach Sara Todd said Crothersville wanted the match more than her team.
“They didn’t want it,” she said. “Crothersville wanted it more than we did. They were scrappier. It seemed like if we made a mistake we kept playing it over in our head. We couldn’t get ourselves back in the game.
We were capable of being Crothersville tonight. I think we came out strong mentally at the start. You would think you would want to carry that intensity and momentum to the second game, and we don’t. I’ve got to give kudos to Katie Stewart and Destiny Barr because they tried to keep everybody up. They were leaders out there tonight.”
Stewart pounded 18 hits with three kills and was 9-for-9 serving.
The Tigers are 1-3 and the Hornets fell to 1-4.