Lady Flyers Take Three Out of Four in VA

Three wins out of four matches added up to a successful two-day trip to Virginia for the Sandhills Community College volleyball team.

After winning both of their matches on Friday in the tri-match hosted by Bryant and Stratton, the Lady Flyers were defeated 21-25, 20-25, 25-22 and 14-25 early Saturday afternoon by a College of Southern Maryland team they had beaten the day before.

Later, they improved to 6-6 on the season after sweeping Mid-Atlantic Christian University 25-19, 25-17 and 25-20.

"I'm super-proud of the girls," Coach Alicia Riggan said upon being reached by phone during the bus ride home. "This was a bounce-back from the way we played at Davidson (a 3-0 loss on Wednesday).

"We go to these tournaments to play against good competition and I think we got that."

Just as the Lady Flyers did to them the evening before, Southern Maryland won the first two sets in the process of evening the score on Saturday. KeKe Lawrence led the Flyers in the hitting department with nine kills followed by Dajsha Fields with seven and Mckenzie Swett with six.

Against Mid-Atlantic Christian, a four-year college located in Elizabeth City, Lawrence and Swett both set personal Flyer career-highs in kills with 16 and 10 respectively. Four service aces by Abby Quick, and two by L'Asia Jackson, helped ease the path to the victory.

After playing 12 matches in the first 16 days of the season, the schedule is light next week with only one at Johnson and Wales of Charlotte at 5 p.m. on Friday. The Flyers will play two more upper division opponents before hosting Patrick Henry in their first Region 10 contest on September 17.

According to Riggan, the team enjoyed the support received from player parents and friends in Virginia.

She feels the players have benefited not only from the competition, but from the team chemistry gained from the travels to Virginia and to South Carolina over the last three weeks.

"Weekends like this create experiences," the coach said. "The more they connect with each other, the better the experience on the court."

C. Bergmann