Pendleton County’s volleyball squad is 5-1 against Class A-sized schools on its schedule thus far.
The remaining games will come against a dizzying array of volleyball power programs in Class AAAA, AAA, and AA that proved extraordinarily formidable. Adversity helped to forge a squad blending upperclassmen with state tournament experience with young and raw, but very talented newcomers.
Tygarts Valley traveled to Franklin last week to face the battle-tested netters and found the Wildcats ready to take out frustrations from those setbacks.
Vaylee Harper opened set number one with the serve. Kinsley Price popped a ball to Alyssa Bennett for a hit to the opposing side that they couldn’t return. Pendleton County took the first four points before conceding the serve. Callie Judy set up Price for the spike to set the score at 5-1. Not long after, Chesnee Colaw set the table by popping the ball up to Katie Heavner, who delivered a set to Bennett for a cross court spike and a 6-3 lead.
Bennett, who led all classes last year in aces, took the serve up 9-4 and proceeded to fire off three consecutive non-returnable balls, edging the score out to 12-4. Somewhat later, Harper’s hit scored the 17th point, but Colaw’s full extension dive at the onset of the volley kept it going. Harper’s service later in the set also picked up two aces on the way to a 25-8 set win.
The Bulldogs fell behind early, but pulled even 4-4 in the second set. When the Wildcats got the set back, Bennett stepped in to serve and served four straight aces. One caromed off a defender’s fists, another off a foot. Tygarts Valley got the serve back down 9-5, then gave it right back by serving into the net. Phoebe Pownell launched two aces of her own to extend the advantage to 12-5. The next serve did get successfully returned, but Pownell set up Tia Heavner for a spike at the middle of the net.
When the Bulldogs got the serve back at 14-6, they sent the ball over and found a diving Callie Judy. She hit the ball back over the net, but Tygarts Valley sent the ball quickly back to her. Showing strong effort, she popped off the floor quickly enough to handle the shot. A Bennett spike put an exclamation and a scoring point on the volley.
Harper closed out the set, starting the serve with the score 17-9. Two aces helped to get the set to the final score of 25-9.
Harper opened set three through her team’s five straight points. Three of those Wildcat points came off Harper aces. Tygarts Valley posted two points to make the score 5-2, but then came a remarkable sequence for Price.
Price spiked the ball to set the score at 6-2, then got two straight blocks at the net. Not long after, she scored two aces and upped the lead to 13-3. Then Katie Heavner helped Tia Heavner to send a scoring shot to the middle. As the set wound down, Ava Bowers sent a spike over for a 17-4 lead.
Two Tia Heavner spikes closed out the set and the game as well.
October won’t bring any more Class AAAA opponents, but the schedule does not lighten up too much. Clashes with Petersburg and top-10 East Hardy open October with games following that against Paw Paw and Pocahontas County.
A difficult stretch of games against almost impossible to beat teams could make or break. The squad that mastered Tygarts Valley last week showed strong teamwork and improvement during the course of the first month of the season. It’s always a risk to load a schedule with a number of big school teams, but the damage came almost solely to the record more so than the team itself as a playing unit.
And of course when regionals start, the season record is history.
