September 7th - The Lady Panthers opened up their conference season in dramatic fashion with a five-game win at rival Blackburn on Thursday. After taking the first two games by scores of 15-11 and 15-5, Greenville dropped the next two games forcing a game five, which they were able to pull out by a score of 15-8 to start the season 1-0 in conference play. "Our team took some huge strides in their maturity tonight," commented Coach Rick McPeak. "A less mature team could have easily lost this match, but it shows how much the team, especially our freshmen, have already gained experience in this type of match."
Greenville jumped out of the gates early in the match forcing
the tempo behind excellent hitting from Michea McKay and Lin
dsay Hairrell.
McKay and Hairrell combined for 8 kills in game one while the
defense held Blackburn's offense in check for the 15-11 win. GC
played very aggressively in game two as well as they cruised to
a 15-5 win, but Blackburn fought back hard in games three and
four and put the pressure back on Greenville by forcing the crucial
fifth game. Greenville showed a great deal of character in the
final game as they quickly took an 8-4 lead and rolled to the
15-8 win.
"Our girls just wanted that last game more than they did," added McPeak. "When you drop two games in a row like that, it's hard to get back up for that final one. We got a huge emotional lift from Michea and Megan (Vandiver) in the last two games and Heather (Caddell) remained calm and poised the whole time. Once we got to that last game, Michea just took over offensively." McKay, a freshman from Greenville High School, had a huge night in her first SLIAC match finishing the match with 20 kills on just 40 attempts and had a hitting percentage of .400.
Defensively, Greenville did a great job of keeping the ball in play and giving the offense more chances to score. "Jamie Hart, Rashell Temples, and Kristi Harms played great in the back row all night," remarked McPeak. "Their role tonight was to come in and play defense and that's exactly what they did." As a team, Greenville hit .244 on the night including 63 kills as freshman setter Heather Caddell had 45 assists in the match with 20 of them going to McKay. "I think we saw the beginning of a great duo in Michea and Heather tonight," McPeak added. "We came through and played a great match and we can still get much better." McKay led the team with 20 kills and Sarah Swanson added 13. Julia Wheeler had 10 kills (.409) and Lindsay Hairrell added 9 kills (.333) from the weak side. McKay also dug 16 balls in the match to lead all players.
Greenville will have the weekend off before resuming play on
Tuesday, September 12th when they have their home opener against
College of Pharmacy at 7:00 at HJ Long Gymnasium.
|
|
SET |
|
DEF. | BLOCK |
| # |
. . Name |
G | K | E | TA | PCT. | A | TA | SA | SE | REC/E | DIGS | BS | BA |
| 15 | M. Mckay . . . . . | 5 | 20 | 4 | 40 | .400 | 0 | 16 | 0 | 2 | 53-8 | 16 | 2 | 0 |
| 17 | S. Swanson . . . | 5 | 13 | 11 | 40 | .050 | 0 | 18 | 1 | 0 | 35-2 | 7 | 0 | 0 |
| 8 | J. Wheeler . . . | 5 | 10 | 2 | 22 | .364 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 9 | M.Vandiver . . . | 5 | 4 | 2 | 16 | .125 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 13 | L. Hairrell. . . . | 5 | 9 | 3 | 18 | .333 | 2 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 0 | 0 |
| 4 | H. Caddell . . . . | 5 | 4 | 1 | 15 | .200 | 45 | 22 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 10 | J. Hart . . . . . . | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | --- | 0 | 17 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| 21 | R. Temples. . . . | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | --- | 0 | 21 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 |
| 11 | V. Watson . . . . | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | -1.00 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 7 | K. Harms . . . . . | 5 | 3 | 1 | 4 | .500 | 0 | 10 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 |
| 27 | M. McDaniels. . | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | --- | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| TOTALS | 5 | 63 | 25 | 156 | .244 | 47 | 109 | 5 | 8 | 88-10 | 52 | 4 | 2 |
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