The Lady Lions of Fairfield traveled to Mowrystown on Tuesday to take on the Whiteoak Lady Wildcats in a Southern Hills Athletic Conference (SHAC) volleyball match-up. The Lady Lions emerged victorious in the cross-county rivalry beating the Lady Wildcats in four sets 3 – 1.
The Lady Lions also welcomed back a meaningful member of the team as Kaiti White made her successful return to game action.
“Yesterday was Kaiti’s first practice. We are trying to ween her back in and keep her off the front row to keep her off her foot. Probably within the next week and a half we will switch back and forth so she can get some front row experience before we go into the tournaments.” , said Fairfield head coach Megan Young.
Fairfield came out hitting on all cylinders as they had an answer for everything that Whiteoak threw their way eventually claiming a narrow set victory 25 – 21.
The second set of the night was a back and forth affair as both teams appeared to hit their stride trading points and serves early in the set. The Lady Wildcats were able to gain an advantage at 13 – 7 forcing the Lady Lions to call a time out to regroup. Fairfield came out of the timeout with renewed energy as they rallied back to within three points at 17 – 14. The rally by the Lady Lions prompted Whiteoak to call a timeout. Following the the Lady Lions continued to surge scoring two straight points to trim the Lady Wildcats lead to one.
However, Whiteoak would not be denied and scored four straight points to create a five point cushion and force Fairfield to take their second time out of the set. Following the break in action the Lady Wildcats finished off the Lady Lions and claimed a 25 – 17 victory to even the match at one set apiece.
The Lady Lions found their groove in the third and fourth sets as the Lady Wildcats let a few small mistakes hinder their intensity. The Lady Lions went on to win the third set 25 – 20 and finished off Whiteoak 25 – 18 in the fourth set to take home the 3 – 1 match victory.
“The girls played awesome. We only had one game last week so it was kind of rough not having any playing time. This week its a little more consistent. For their first game back this week they did very well. They had some minor mess ups but nothing extreme.” , said Young.
Whiteoak head coach Katie Pollard was not pleased with the intensity displayed by her team and said, “We don’t play with intensity 100 percent of the time. We play with intensity 30 percent of the time and that’s just not gonna win ball games and they know that.”
Whiteoak will be back in action on Friday, Sept. 29, when they travel to West Union to take on the Lady Dragons in league play.
The Lady Lions will return to the court on Thursday, Sept. 28, when they travel to Manchester to take on the Lady Greyhounds in a key SHAC matchup.
Reach Ryan Applegate at 937-402-2572, or on Twitter @RCApplegate89.
