Friday, November 13, 2009
Titans, Knights to meet again
Hidden Valley and rival Cave Spring will play for the Region IV title on Saturday.
Photos by Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times
Members of the Cave Spring volleyball team celebrate after defeating Patrick County on Thursday in the Region IV semifinals. The Knights will face rival Hidden Valley in the region title match.
Hidden Valley's Sarah Church sends a spike past Tunstall's Kyla Moorefield during Thursday's Region IV semifinal match.
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Maybe Cave Spring and Hidden Valley's volleyball teams were just anxious to clinch Group AA playoff berths.
Or maybe the Knights and Titans just couldn't wait for a chance to play each other again.
Whatever the reason, both of the River Ridge teams blazed through their Region IV semifinal matches in three games apiece on Thursday at Hidden Valley to set up a championship showdown on Saturday at 6 p.m.
Cave Spring defeated Patrick County 25-14, 25-13, 25-14 and Hidden Valley beat Tunstall 25-12, 25-6, 25-18.
The two matches were very similar, too.
Both the Cougars and the Trojans dug themselves early holes and never really caught up to the speed that the River Ridge teams were playing at.
"We're not used to anything like that so it's a little hard to play defense [against] something you really don't see much," Patrick County coach Heidi Moore said of Cave Spring.
"Well they have all different kinds of tempos that they're going at all the time. ... They're coming from every which way and it's really hard to block."
Tunstall coach Jackie Hardy said his team experienced similar problems against the Titans.
"They put us on defense," he said. "We were never able [to get into] our offense ... And when you play defense all the time and not put the other team on defense you're not gonna be successful."
In the first semifinal match, Cave Spring (21-3) was led by Taylor Baumann's 27 assists, six kills and four aces. Morgan Shannon totaled 12 kills and Rebekah Henderson finished with 12 service points.
"I am extremely excited and I talked to some of the girls on the team that have been to state and they said that it's the best experience ever," Baumann said. "I just really hope that we can go really far."
Olivia Triplett, Kylene Culler and Deleigh Barbour each had four kills for Patrick County (17-7).
In the second semifinal, Sam Ringer had 10 kills, Sarah Church had eight kills and five aces, Alexandra Martin had 30 assists and Kimberly McDow notched 15 digs and five aces for the Titans (20-3).
Kelsey Smith had eight kills and two blocks for Tunstall (22-2).
Now on to Saturday and the big question is, what's going to give? The Titans are the two-time defending Region IV champs while the Knights have beaten Hidden Valley the three times they've met this year.
Cave Spring coach Tamalyn Tanis has an idea what might decide the region championship.
"At this point in the season I don't know that teams can play better, I think you can just execute better," she said.
And execution always plays a big part when these rivals meet up.
Hidden Valley's Samantha Klostermann said the Titans have to play like they did Thursday in order to beat the Knights, without any letdowns, and a win could do a lot for the Titans.
"It definitely would give us a lot of confidence and ... just give us that push to know that we can do it," she said. "We all know we can, we just haven't yet."
For both teams, a loss obviously isn't the end of the season, but the desire to win on Saturday is still there for each.
"No, it's not the end of the world because we get to move on but we would like to be three-time regional champs. That'd be nice," Titans coach Carla Poff said. "It's something I think the girls really want."
Tanis had similar sentiments.
"You always want to win every match," she said. "The girls really just want to keep playing their best."
