Nora Teasley prepares to serve the ball during Thursday night’s matchup with Lee County at Scotland High School.
Andrew Smolar | The Laurinburg Exchange
Ramsey Hale hits the ball past two Lee County defenders going up for the block.
Andrew Smolar | The Laurinburg Exchange
Reagan Malpass (1) sets the ball up for a teammate during the Scots’ win.
Andrew Smolar | The Laurinburg Exchange
LAURINBURG —The Lady Scots volleyball team defeated SAC rival Lee County on Thursday night at Scotland High School in a dominant 3-0 sweep that saw the Scots win every set by 10 points or more. Scotland improves to 10-2 overall (2-2 in conference games) with the win while the Yellow Jackets fall to 7-3 overall (2-3 vs SAC teams) with the loss. With Lee County having pulled off an upset over Union Pines earlier this season, Head Coach Adam Romaine was glad to see his team come in hungry and not overlook a good opponent.
“When we go down there in a couple of weeks we’re going to get a great game from them,” Romaine said. “When you see what they did to Union Pines I was expecting a good game, we did some things today, practiced an hour before the game and that helped why we looked better tonight.”
The Scots grabbed the early lead in the first set and never relinquished it. After holding a 3-2 advantage, Scotland got five unanswered points to stretch their lead to six before Lee County called a timeout. That break didn’t do the Yellow Jackets much good as the Scots went on an 8-4 run to go up 16-6 before Lee County had to call another timeout. Scotland kept their foot on the gas and cruised to the finish line after that, winning the set handily 25-11.
The second set had some initial back and forth before the Scots took charge with one big run in the early going. After being knotted in a 5-5 tie, Scotland got five points in a row before the Yellow Jackets tried to halt their moment with a timeout. That didn’t work as the Scots got another three unanswered points right out of the break as part of a 6-1 run that put them up 16-6, leading to another Lee County timeout. The Yellow Jackets did make a small run to get within six at 18-12 but never got any closer than that as Scotland closed out the set strong and won it 25-15.
The final set was another that saw the Scots take firm control with one good run. While Scotland never trailed, they didn’t truly separate themselves from Lee County until they got five unanswered points to go up 11-4, forcing a Yellow Jackets timeout. The Scots would keep the good times rolling out of the break, scoring another five unanswered to blow the set wide open at 16-4. They wound up taking the final set in a 25-9 blowout. Romaine was pleased with his team minimizing errors throughout the game.
“Serving and serve receive looked great tonight,” Romaine said. “In games like this the errors don’t hurt you that much, it’s the tighter games that they hurt, we were lucky that some of the errors we were making happened when we were up by a lot.”
Senior Addison Johnson led the team in kills with 12 while also adding two digs and two block assists. Molly Gallagher had six digs while Ramsey Hale had five block assists.
The team will have the weekend off before returning to action on Tuesday night against archrival Richmond. It will be the first of five straight road games for the Scots, three of which will be against conference opponents. They will face Richmond, Terry Sanford and Hoke County from Tuesday to Thursday next week. Romaine was happy to see his team bounce back in short order but is aware of the work that lies ahead for his group in their next stretch.
“Knowing it’s in the middle of the season and we’re coming off some bad losses, our main focus was winning this game,” Romaine said. “We’re going to have to work hard on some things Monday to get ready for some of those conference games.”