GREENVILLE – The Lady Wave defeated the visiting Fairborn Lady Skyhawks 3-1 in Miami Valley League volleyball action.
Greenville took an early 8-point 10-2 first set lead and made the lead hold up for a 25-17 win to go up 1-0.
The Lady Wave came out slow in the second set and trailed 17-21 before knotting the score at 23-23, 24-24, and 25-25, sending the set to overtime with scores of 26-26, 27-27 before the Lady Firebirds took the set 29-27, evening the match at 1-1.
Greenville grabbed an 11-5 third set lead and never looked back in posting a double-digit 25-10 third set win and lead 2-1.
“The team, the last couple of nights, have been playing really well, and that second set, for some reason, they got kind of complacent, but did so well coming back,” said Michelle Hardesty. “We missed four or five serves in a row, which is unusual, just little things that evidently we just needed more time with Fairborn tonight.”
“A lot of errors in the second set led to a closer set than probably should have been,” Jim Hardesty stated. “We made some nice plays there in the second set to get back into the game, and then it went back and forth. We couldn’t make the play to end it.”
Set No. 4 had the teams playing to a 5-5 score with the Lady Wave taking advantage of a 6-0 run to lead 11-5, bringing a timeout from the Fairborn bench. Greenville made it a double-digit set at 19-9 before coasting to a 25-17 conference victory.
Greenville senior Kindyl Peltz set a new all-time Lady Wave record, recording her 2,135 assists to move ahead of Libby McKinney from the class of 2021.
“We come back strong in the third and fourth sets with an excellent effort … kind of where we wanted to be,” Jim said. “We tried to get Avery (Shipp) back in the game. She hasn’t played for a week due to an ankle injury, so we are trying to get her back. We got everything back going the way we need to go.”
With the win, the Lady Wave improves to 9-9 overall on the season and 7-7 in MVL play.
Coach Michelle and Jim Hardesty are hoping for a favorable tournament draw this Sunday, October 5th, when the OHSAA volleyball tournament drawings take place.
“Going into the tournament, this second half of the season, we became a different team and very solid,” Coach Michelle Hardesty said. “The girls are playing very cohesively; they’re together, and they have a good opportunity to go on a little run here at the end of the season. We have an opportunity to go out with a winning record and finish the season in that manner and see what happens going into the tournament.”
