Liberty Bell’s Neve Kelly sent the ball toward the Brewster side of the net in the Mountain Lions’ win over the visiting Bears.
It was a Jekyll and Hyde sort of night as the Liberty Bell High School volleyball team dispensed with the Brewster Bears for the second time this season, a 3-1 win last Thursday night at home in The Den. Set scores were 25-20, 25-10, 23-25 and 25-3.
The Dr. Jekyll Mountain Lions displayed their creative mastery of the game, and control of the Bears in winning sets two and four by a combined 50-13 score, but Mr. Hyde showed his face in sets one and three as the home team struggled to score points and committed crucial errors.
“I think we were a little too laid back in that [third] set,” said senior outside hitter and team co-captain Wynter Woras. “We just got too comfortable thinking we would beat them and played down to their level instead playing up to ours. We had too many unforced errors in that set and that cost us.”
Whatever happened in that third set, coach Beth Blank served up a magic elixir, and the Mountain Lions came out roaring in the fourth. With sophomore Zephyr Woras on the service line, Liberty Bell ran the score out to 11-0 before finally giving up a point and surrendering service to the Bears. In her 12 consecutive serves, Woras dished out eight aces.
“I was just in my zone,” Woras said of her serving streak. “I’ve been working on staying positive in my head and working on my footwork. I felt like my throws were near perfect and that helped with my serves.”
Overall, Woras carded 12 aces in a match where the Mountain Lions owned service, winning that stat 22-4 over the Bears. She also served at 90%, 27 of her 30 offerings being on target.
Wynter Woras was a tick behind on percentage of service success at 89% (17/19), the most important being her 10-serve run to close out the match.
On the net, Mira Hirsch led the defensive effort with five blocks, two touches and two kill-blocks. Mylie Erks led the Lions’ offense with 10 kills, Wynter Woras scored nine kills and Avery Vracin tallied seven kills.
Blank was pleased with the overall effort, and especially impressed with the play of Zephyr Woras. “She’s a great, dependable sixth rotation player,” Blank said. “She’s athletic and she’s not always textbook with the way she moves around the court, but she gets the job done.”
Blank also pointed to Hirsch’s play on the front row, joined by both Vracin and Kara McMillan making life tough on the Bears.
Backrow player Violet Darwood compiled a perfect seven-for-seven on serve-receive.
“She’s just a worker bee,” said Blank of Darwood. “She’s quiet and does her job. You don’t really notice her until she makes a great play. She’s committed herself this season to this team, attending all of the spring and summer workouts and drills. She’s hard on herself, but this year really believes in herself. I adore her for how hard she works.”
The girls traveled to Chelan on Saturday to play a pair of matches against highly ranked 1A teams in No. 9 Meridian and No. 6 Lynden Christian, losing both by scores of 1-3 and 0-3, respectively. Team statistician Greg Knott reported the girls took the third set from Meridian in the loss, 23-25, 19-25, 25-18 and 14-25. While being swept by the Lynx, it was a competitive match with scores 24-26, 17-25 and 23-25.
Earlier in the week, on Tuesday, it was nailbiter time in Manson as the girls escaped with a 3-2 match win. Set scores for the match were 20-25, 25-20, 22-25, 25-14 and 15-10.
Liberty Bell heads into this week’s Senior Night Thursday match with a league record of 3-1, pending the results of Tuesday night’s match at Lake Roosevelt. Okanogan is tied with Liberty Bell at 3-1 and had a tougher battle Tuesday, entertaining a steadily improving Manson team. In either case, Thursday’s match will determine the No. 2 seed into the CW2B post season tournament.
Liberty Bell’s chances for No. 1 are remote at best, having lost to Tonasket two weeks ago.
The post season gets underway next Tuesday with first-round matches, the No. 3 seed hosting No. 6 and No. 4 hosting No. 5 in single-elimination matches to determine who gets to travel to the two top seeds for Round 2 on Oct. 29.
Match time Thursday on Senior Night is 6:30 p.m. at Liberty Bell, and there is no admission fee for this final regular season match.
