Seymour welcomed a Columbus East squad into Lloyd E. Scott Gymnasium, and it was an Olympians program that has bested the Owls in every match since 2013.

That 9-season streak was put to rest on Tuesday night as Seymour swept Columbus East 25-21, 25-17, 25-22.

“This was a great match for us tonight,” head coach Angie Lucas said. “We’ve been working really hard on some things, and I saw those things improve tonight. Columbus East is a very strong program. For us to sweep all three teams, it’s a really good sign for our program.”

As Lucas alluded to, Seymour’s C team beat East 25-21, 12-20, 15-8, and the JV team rolled to a 25-4, 25-14 victory. Claire Urbanski led the C team with five kills and Norah Campbell led JV with eight kills while Maddie Schrader had seven aces for the JV team.

When varsity got going, it was a back-and-forth affair for much of the first set. Seymour held the advantage on the scoreboard just about the whole way, but the Owls could never comfortably pull away.

One thing noticeable on the court was the Owls’ ability to communicate with one another after each play.

“We didn’t do that last year,” Lucas said. “Having most these kids back on the court from last year has been huge. Communication is big.”

Seymour was able to create some separation from East in the second set, winning that one comfortably 25-17, but the third set the Owls found themselves trailing.

East held a 17-15 lead and seemed like it had the momentum. Seymour turned it around on defense, getting some big blocks from Cali Cummings.

“We talked in the timeout about we were getting abused on the block,” Lucas said. “Once we cleaned up our blocks a bit — we got some major blocks from Cali in that front row — it really changed the momentum.”

The Owls were able to turn it around to win the set and complete the sweep.

Olivia Fish, like she always does, led the team in hitting, going 35-37 with 17 kills.

“Olivia, she always brings everything she has to the program and to the team,” Lucas said.

Cummings hit 25-28 with 10 kills and Breanna Lawrence hit 20-21 with seven kills. As a team, Seymour hit 103-110 with 43 kills.

Lawrence led the Owls in serving, going 15-18 with five aces. Raeann Baker served 9-10 with two aces and Fish went 6-7 with two aces. As a team, Seymour served 60-67 with 10 aces.

Addi Lemon led the team in both digs and assists, finishing with 11 and 36, respectively. Lucas thought Lemon’s placement on her passes really helped the Owls.

“I thought Addi Lemon did a really great job,” the Owl head coach said. “We had a game plan as they had a 6-foot-4 player that’s very talented and going to Illinois. We were doing our best to keep the ball away from her and Addi did a really good job of that.”

The win improved Seymour’s record to 4-1 overall and undefeated in the Hoosier Hills Conference. The Owls have a big match looming with Floyd Central next week that will be vital for the conference standings.

But before that, Seymour will close out this week with a home match against Bloomington North on Thursday and then compete in the Bloomington South Invitational on Saturday, where the Owls will play three matches.

The first will be against Brownstown Central, the second against this same Columbus East squad, and the third will be a crossover match against one of the teams in the other pool.

The Owls will look to keep getting better as the matches continue to rack up.

“Always the first contact, ball control. We’re never satisfied with that, we always want better and better,” Lucas said. “And then just working our offense, there are certain things that we want to put in that we haven’t. We’re going to work slowly on putting them in so as we get to sectional, we’re gonna do some things to hopefully surprise some people. But like I said, I’m really, really proud of all three teams tonight.”