By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
SALEM, Ore.– The South Salem Volleyball team broke through during the third set of Tuesday’s Central Valley Conference matchup with their rival Sprague.
The opening two sets of the game saw the Saxons and Olympian going neck-and-neck with another with Sprague just finding an edge to take the first two sets in what would be an 25-20, 25-22, 22-25, 25-15 victory over South Salem.
They, Sprague, knew they couldn’t take it easy against South Salem. It was the fundamentals, those basics, that helped the Olympians take advantage of the rust that the Saxons had playing in their fourth game of the season to the Sprague’s tenth on the year.
“We couldn’t take this team for granted, they are a strong team and that we’re a strong team too and we just really needed to put our energy into this set, this is the one, there’s nothing to lose and go do our best,” said the Oly’s Anna Morley.
In that third set, it was shaping up to be much of the same. The Saxons went up 6-3 to open the set, and the Olys tied it up at six before South Salem found a grove of their own to go up 12-7. Two Sprague timeouts couldn’t slow down the pace as the Saxons grew their lead to 18-12 en route to taking the set.
That rust from the lack of live reps that showed from those first two sets, they seemed to have faded for South Salem as they played more consistently with their passes and setting up their offense.
“It took us a little to settle in, and things were going ok, but we couldn’t just over that hump in those first couple of sets. That third set, I felt like we did a much better job taking care of the ball,” said South Salem Head Coach Matt Leichty. “We passed much better and we were able to run our offense the way we need to and offense is the name of the game.
“We have a lot of it, and we got to be able to utilize it.”
But the Olympians had one of those famed Anne Olsen talks going into the fourth set.
It woke them up as they came out with a whole lot of anger and caught South Salem in a lull that allowed Sprague to built a 15-3 lead in the fourth set before the Saxons straightened out the ship to have a 12-10 advantage by sets end.
“She pretty much said play as the players that we know we are. We know that we’re a good team at our heart and to just believe that we can do it. That we’re a strong enough team to be able to pull through and go back to the basics and be that strong team,” said Morley.
Sprague, who improves to 10-0 on the year and 2-0 in Central Valley Conference play, will host their annual tournament on Saturday. The Saxons, who fall to 3-1 on the year and 0-1 in CVC play, will host North Salem on Thursday before heading up to the Grant Tournament on Saturday.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
