It must have been strange for the Scotland High School volleyball team to be taking on the Jack Britt Buccaneers to open the season in a non-conference match.

The two schools, major rivals for years in the now-defunct Mid-Southeastern 4-A Conference, have gone into separate leagues. What was very familiar to Scotland was Monday's outcome, a 3-0 sweep that gives the Lady Scots 23 consecutive victories in the regular season.

Scotland held Britt off 26-24 in Game 1, won 25-19 in the second game and completed the sweep by erasing a late deficit for a 25-21 victory in Game 3. The Lady Scots' last loss in the regular season came on Oct. 17, 2007 against... you guessed it, Jack Britt.

Scotland was led by big-hitting senior Whitney Campbell, who led her team with 12 service points, five aces and 12 kills against the Buccaneers. Campbell — who was as dominant on the front line as any junior who has ever played for head coach David Barnes during his SHS tenure — added six digs in the opener.

Fellow senior Josephine Yang had a team-high 14 digs and was the Scots' leading passer, getting 17-of-25 passes to target. Yang, Scotland's three-time all-conference libero, also had seven serving points.

Candace Carter, in her new job as the varsity team's full-time starting setter, opened the season strong with a team-high 24 assists to go with six digs and eight serving points.

Scotland had an impressive trip to Jack Britt in the preseason, picking up four wins at a 14-team scrimmage hosted by the Bucs on Saturday. The scrimmages were played in 40-minutes segments, and SHS picked up wins over three Wilmington schools (Laney, Hoggard and Ashley) in addition to a victory over West Brunswick.

Scotland had never defeated Hoggard in volleyball before Saturday. Of his team's overall performance on Saturday, Barnes said, "I was impressed. By the time it was over, people were standing around, taking note of Scotland and players like Whitney Campbell."

Scotland was not consistent at all times in their season-opening win over the Bucs. Barnes, always honest with his assessments (even in victory), looked at Monday's win, not through rose-colored glasses, but instead with an eye for identifying aspects of the game his team needs to work on.

One of those is consistency, a theme that Barnes preached throughout the 2008 season, when his team went 22-0 in the regular season and made school history by advancing to the fourth round of the postseason.

"We had some really high notes in there and we had some flats. We need to get rid of some of those flats," said Barnes. "The thing about it is, you can't really tell why it's happening sometimes.

"It's not like teams are knocking holes in the floor against us. We're pretty much beating ourselves in those situations. We can't afford to have those lulls where we lose five or six unanswered points."

Another big part of Monday's success for the Scots was serve accuracy.

"The first thing about being good in volleyball is serving, and the second thing about being good in volleyball is passing," said Barnes. "You're going to serve at 90 percent, or you're not going to serve for me."

Scotland volleyball, in its never-ending quest for perfection, visits South View on Wednesday, starting at 5 p.m. with the junior-varsity match.