Gallery by Ashley Honaker
Lindside – It took two sets for James Monroe to truly ramp up the horsepower in its sectional championship matchup with Liberty.
The Raiders tried to match that gear but ran out of gas.
The Mavericks dominated the final set of their matchup Wednesday, sweeping Liberty to claim the Section 2 title in Lindside.
Both teams advance to the Class AA Region 3 co-final where they’ll face a pair of Wyoming County teams. James Monroe will host Westside, which fell to Wyoming East in the Section 1 title game while the Raiders will travel to Wyoming East. Both games will be played on Wednesday with the winners advancing to the state tournament.
The Mavericks claimed their three sets 25-14, 25-23 and 25-8, flexing their muscles in the final stanza.
Holding off a Liberty rally that saw the Raiders get within a point of tying the second set at 24-all, the Mavericks eradicated the chance of an upset in the third.
Leading 4-3, James Monroe ripped an 11-2 run with junior Aliyah Clarkson serving the Raiders fits. Her combination of power and touch as well as an adjustment up front proved difficult for the visitors to handle and the run was appropriately capped by an ace to make it 18-5.
“I switched some people on the net and made some adjustments there just to see how that went,” James Monroe head coach Julie Braley said. “I wanted to try to get another hitter and Maggie (Boroski) just stepped up and went in there and did what Maggie does. I mean, she’s a beast, and she was getting those kills in the middle, and that helped out a lot. And Ava Dunlap moved over to the right side and opened that up, and she’s really good at blocking and getting the timing down. And I knew that was a person that she could block pretty easily if she got over there. So we just kind of switched that a little bit, and that helped.”
Through the first two sets Liberty found momentum early leading 4-2 in the first and 3-0 in the second but tallied off in the middle parts. The Raiders saw ties of 6-6 and 7-7 in separate sets turn into deficits of 15-7 and 13-8, never regaining their footing.
“I don’t really know what happened,” Liberty head coach Denise Arline said. “I mean, I know they did that because they started out good, and I told them, I said, ‘You know who is coming out of the gate, and you go all the way through there.’ Well, we started out well but that middle section is where we had problems. I’m not really sure what happened. I think it’s mindset.”
For the Mavericks it came down to situational preparation and hitting their stride after acclimating.
“The drills we do in practice, we always, try to finish the game fast,” Bradley said. “We’ll do drills where we make the scenario where we’re behind and try to speed it up and get points going. We were just a little bit out of our routine. We haven’t had a practice – we played Monday and Tuesday and tonight, and we haven’t had our practices like we usually do. It takes us a minute to get warm, and once we get warmed up, we’re ready to go. So sitting and watching a game and waiting, it’s kind of like they get pumped up and ready to go, and then they kind of slow down waiting for the game to finish. So I think that kind of helps us out.”
Up next for both teams are familiar matchups.
James Monroe played Westside at the Coalfield Conference Tournament, beating the Renegades. Bradley isn’t putting too much stock in those results though.
“We didn’t play Westside in regular season until the Coalfield and we beat them both times down there,” Bradley said. “But that’s something you can’t, you don’t want to sit there and just think, ‘Hey, we’ve done that,’ and forget about it. You still have to prepare for Westside and not look ahead. Our goal has always been to get back to Charleston. They know it’s going to be difficult moving up from single-A to double-A, and so they set the bar high this year. We’ve gone to several tournaments, and they’ve played a lot of big teams in four-A and three-A and it helps your confidence a little bit. So I think they’re ready to get there. I just want them to take it one step at a time, just hold up a little bit and be patient. It’ll come I hope.”
Liberty dropped both of its regular season matches with Wyoming East, failing to win a set against the Warriors. The Lady Warriors are seeking their first state tournament berth in program history but Arline came away impressed with her team’s effort against one of the top teams in the state in James Monroe.
“If we play like we played tonight – because James Monroe has an excellent team – so if we play like we played that second set, it’s going to be alright,” Arline said.
