Seymour’s volleyball team pulled away from Madison in all three sets for a 25-14, 25-17, 25-15 sweep of the Cubs in the Lloyd E. Scott Gymnasium Saturday morning.
“We had a lot of mental errors, but we’ve been dealing with that,” Owls coach Angie Lucas said. “That’s the thing with this group of girls, we just make a lot of mental errors, unforced errors that we’ve got to clean up.”
She said her team had to make changes on its attacking because of Madison’s defense.
“I thought Madison played very well defensively, and they have improved so much, and because of that I don’t know if our girls were quite ready for that today,” Lucas said. “So it was good for them to see that and understand that some people are going to dig them up and as hitters they’ve got to come back with different shots. It was good for us to experience that.”
Paige Lawrence served the Owls into a 5-0 lead at the start of the first set. She had three aces during that string of points and was 20-22-5 serving for the day.
Madison closed to trail 6-5, and trailed 13-11 before the Owls took command and used a kill by Olivia Fish to win the first set.
The second set was tied several times in the early stages, including at 13-all before Lawrence served her team to a 19-13 lead to stay ahead. Breanna Lawrence had a kill for set point.
“We started passing better,” Lucas said of her team taking control in the second set. “When we get the ball to Addi (Lemon) quickly then we feel like we can outhit most teams, so it’s the speed that the ball is traveling to Addi that is what we’re trying to improve on.
“Instead of passing a real high ball and giving everybody time we’re trying to quicken up our offense. That’s what we’re working on. We’re hoping we can get that down. That will help us tremendously.”
Lemon had 31 assists.
Seymour held a 15-12 lead in the third set before pulling away and used back-to-back kills by Cali Cummings and a pair of aces by Greer Henry to put this one in the win column.
Lucas said, “I felt like Cali played very well. She hit the ball very well, so I was really happy for her.”
Fish was 26-30-14 and Cummings was 17-18-12 in attacks.
Cummings credited her strong attacking to receiving good passes from Lemon.
“I’m thankful for my passers because they get it up to Addi and I’ve got all my trust in Addi that she is giving me good sets,” she said. “When she doesn’t I’ll figure out something else with the ball I’ve been given.”
Cummings said she changed her attacking to tipping as well as hitting line and over the middle.
“On the corners we’ve been working on hitting our line shots, and in the middle I’m just hitting around the blockers,” she said.
Seymour won the junior varsity match 25-19, 25-14 as Hannah Dart was 11-12-3 in serving and had 20 assists.
Seymour will play Columbus East Tuesday night. The match will be at Southside Middle School because of water damage to East’s gymnasium.