NEW CARLISLE – The Lady Wave dropped its opening OHSAA DII opening-round volleyball match 3-1 to the Benjamin Logan Lady Raiders.
“It was a tough night for us,” said Greenville assistant coach, Jim Hardesty. “We made quite a few mistakes – pretty proud of them though. They’ve had one heck of a season and they’re young so we are going to be back strong again next year. We’re only losing one senior starter out of this group and everybody else will be back – our young team had a nice JV season.”
The Lady Wave junior varsity team completed the regular season with a winning record.
Leading 5-3 in the opening set, the Lady Raiders took advantage of a 12-0 scoring run to push its lead to 17-3 with Greenville closing out the set on a 12-8 run to lose 25-15 on go down 1-0.
The Lady Wave rebounded in set No. 2 bolting out to a nine-point 17-8 advantage and earn a double-digit 25-14 second set win and even the match at a game apiece.
“They come back very strong that second set,” Hardesty noted. “At that point after the second set, I thought we were right where we needed to be.”
On a night that just wasn’t meant to be, Ben Logan jumped out to a 5-0 third-set lead and never looked back taking the set 25-12 taking a 2-1 advantage.
“We just didn’t make the plays early in that match where we needed to,” said Coach Hardesty. “We fell behind and we just couldn’t chase them down there at the end.”
The fourth set Greenville held a 1-0 lead that would prove to be its last advantage of the night as the Logan County girls would take the final set by a 25-11 score bringing a good Lady Wave season to a close.
“We tried to throw a few things at them,” Hardesty said. “I thought after the second set we were going to be okay but it just wasn’t our night tonight.”
“Tonight we’re not going to hang our heads. We’re going to be proud of them and we’re going to come back stronger next year.”
“It gives them something to really work on,” added Hardesty. “The tournament games are really different than regular season games. You really don’t feel the pressure until late in the game and we didn’t respond really well. Next year we hope to come back and be a more dominant team in the tournament.”
The Greenville Lady Wave finishes the season with an impressive 16-6 regular season mark and a 14-4 MVL record.
“Not making any excuses, we really just didn’t play well enough tonight but we’ve had one heck of a season,” Coach Hardesty said.
Three Greenville seniors played their final volleyball match for the Lady Wave program; Senior Captain, Skylar Bryson, Mya Conway, and Ava Loudy.
“Our three seniors did a great job of producing this year,” Hardesty stated. “Skylar got a little banged up in the last match (of the season) which would have made a difference for us tonight if we could have played her all the way around. Mya and Ava did a great job on the right side. They had some really nice hitters on the outside and they did a commendable job getting out there.”
