The Signal Mountain Lady Eagle volleyball team is on a roll right now.
Playing their final district match at Red Bank’s Susan Ingram Thurman Gymnasium Wednesday night, the Lady Eagles improved to 17-12 overall with their eighth straight win and clinched first place in next week’s District 6-AAA tournament, which will also be played at Red Bank.
There was never much doubt about the outcome of Wednesday’s match as the Lady Eagles are playing their best at just the right time and are zeroed in on doing their best to successfully defend the Class AA state title they won last year.
Red Bank is a much improved team. Even though the Lady Lions got beat in three straight sets, they were a whole lot more competitive than in matches past and it wasn’t a cakewalk for the Lady Eagles like most had expected.
Set scores were 25-13, 25-15 and 25-14 as Red Bank dropped to 7-8 overall and 1-4 in district play where they most likely will be the fourth seed in the tournament that begins on Tuesday.
Serving was a hot topic for Signal Mountain coach Jennifer Redman on both a positive negative note.
“I’m just glad that we earned the top seed for next week’s tournament. That just means that everyone will be gunning for us,” Redman said afterward.
“At this point, we just want to be consistent and to control matters on our side of the net. And we’ve got to limit our service errors. We had 13 today and we can’t afford that moving forward. That’s probably the only negative from today’s match. We also had 23 aces, so that was a positive.
“I’m really proud of the progress we’ve made in recent weeks. The key is to always be playing your best at post-season time and I feel like we’re doing just that. But the season starts now as all of this other stuff has just been a warmup,” she smiled.
Red Bank coach Taylor Usery has seen tons of improvement from her team since the season began. The Lady Lions didn’t win their final regular-season match, but they did themselves proud and have absolutely nothing to be ashamed about.
“I’m so proud of how these girls competed today as they battled for all they were worth the entire match,” Usery began.
“We struggled with serve receive, but Signal Mountain is the best team we’ve played this year and they helped us get better today. There were times when we could have been a bit more aggressive, but I liked how we battled as we never gave up,” she smiled.
Carlee Lowry is one of five Signal Mountain seniors who is just getting back to full speed after spending much of the fall recovering from ACL surgery following basketball season.
She had her usual outstanding match and finished with 11 kills, nine digs and seven aces and that was without playing in the third set.
Junior Becca Rogers, who like Lowry can be quite intimidating up front at times, also had another good day as she finished with 15 digs, eight aces and four kills in addition to three blocks.
The Red Bank squad really had no answer for these two as they pretty much dominated play from start to finish.
Red Bank had a 5-3 lead early in the first set, but four straight service points from Rogers, including her first ace, allowed the Lady Eagles to take a 7-5 lead. Signal’s lead was 12-10 following a kill from Red Bank’s Brooklynn Ervin before the Lady Eagles scored six of the next seven points and it didn’t get any closer.
Ashanti Eddins had two kills at the start of the second set as Red Bank had a 2-1 lead, but a kill from Signal’s Maddie Shelton knotted the score at 6-6 before Lowry knocked down seven straight service points, including four straight aces, as the Lady Eagles slowly pulled away.
An ace from Ervin allowed the Lady Lions to get within three points at 13-10, but Signal was able to get five more aces in the final eight points to win on Lowry’s final kill of the match.
Red Bank played toe-to-toe with the Lady Eagles at the start of the third set, much like the first two, and had an 8-7 lead following a kill by Kenadi Baughman. Another kill from Lauren Kellogg a minute later put the Lady Lions up 10-9 before Signal took the lead for the last time with four straight points.
Appropriately, Rogers had her final two aces to clinch the win.
While Lowry and Rogers had their usual outstanding matches, Elle Ramsey did the same and finished the evening with 28 assists.
Erwin finished with three kills and nine digs to lead Red Bank while Eddins also had three kills and a pair of blocks. Baughman was consistent as usual and finished with six assists and five digs.
Signal will play its final regular-season home match Thursday when they host East Hamilton as they honor the five seniors.
Red Bank returns to action in the 6-AAA tournament when they most likely face fifth-seed Grundy County on Tuesday. The winner of that match will face Signal Mountain on Wednesday.
The two semifinal winners will then meet for the championship on Thursday with both finalists advancing to the Region tournament the following week.
SIGNAL MOUNTAIN STATS:
Emma Schleger – 5 digs
Carlee Lowry – 7 aces, 11 kills, 9 digs
Maddie Shelton – 3 kills, 1 dig
Isabella Benton – 1 kill
Sydney Smith – 4 aces, 6 digs, 6 kills
Becca Rogers – 8 aces, 4 kills, 15 digs, 3 blocks
Kate Gilbert – 3 kills, 1 dig
Elle Ramsey – 4 aces, 2 digs, 28 assists
Leah Davis – 3 digs
Kate Lowe – 5 digs.
RED BANK STATS:
Sydney Callison – 3 digs
Brooklyn Smith – 1 kill, 4 digs
Jai’Laina Davis – 1 ace, 5 digs
Kenadi Baughman – 5 digs, 6 assists
Ashanti Eddins – 3 kills, 2 blocks
Brooklynn Ervin – 1 ace, 3 kills, 9 digs
Lauren Kellogg – 1 kill, 3 digs
Violet Mercer – 4 digs.
(Email John Hunt at nomarathonmoose@gmail.com)