varsity.roanoke.com

ERIC BRADY The Roanoke Times

Sarah Church (left) of Hidden Valley tries to defend a hit from Morgan Shannon of Cave Spring.

It's pretty fitting that Cave Spring and Hidden Valley were facing off on Thursday night to decide the River Ridge District regular season championship.

They play one another quite often, and the safe bet is that at some point over the next few weeks during the postseason, they'll see each other again.

Thursday night was Round 2 between the teams this season, and the visiting Knights won in four games --25-20, 23-25, 25-19, 25-22 --to clinch the River Ridge regular season title and sweep the regular-season series with the Titans.

And a big reason Cave Spring (17-3, 10-0) won was defense and keeping the ball in play.

"We're a really short team this year, so obviously the focus for us all year has been defense," Knights coach Tamalyn Tanis said. "... The kids have just done a phenomenal job all year just working really hard."

Jocelyn Kellinger had a hand in that defense with 21 digs.

"We didn't lose focus too long. If we did, we got it right back," Kellinger said. "... Our goal wasn't just to come out and beat them, it was to play our best and work hard and have fun."

The Knights didn't just have fun on defense.

Morgan Shannon banged down 25 kills, while Lauren Sledd had 13 and Emily Lawrence added 10.

Taylor Baumann was busy setting that trio up, dishing out 45 assists.

"We weren't thinking that this was a big game or anything, we just wanted to play like a team." Shannon said.

And what about Hidden Valley?

The Titans (17-2, 8-2) only lost two matches all year, both of them to Cave Spring.

Their players seemed to have already dissected this match and moved on.

"Honestly, I don't think they did anything [to beat us]," Samantha Klostermann said. "... We made the mistakes. We made the errors. We just didn't play as a team."

Both teams acknowledged that playing each other is the perfect tune-up right before the postseason.

"We know what our weaknesses are, and we know what we need to [do to] fix it and we can do that," Hidden Valley's Sam Ringer said.

Ringer and Klostermann had 13 and 12 kills, respectively, for the Titans, while Lottie Meadows had 36 assists and Kimberly McDow added 16 digs.

Titans hitter Sarah Church was already looking toward the next match.

"We're ready," she said. "This doesn't set us back at all. ... And we know that this is not the end. We're not JV right now. This isn't the end of our season.

"We still have a lot to go and it doesn't put our confidence down at all. We're ready."

The Knights seem to be thinking similarly.

"I think it's definitely a good tune-up," Shannon said. "We'll be ready."

The River Ridge District tournament begins Monday. Both the Titans and Knights will get first-round byes.