For The Tribune
Coach Holly Birdsong said she saw improvement in several areas from her Seymour volleyball team during Tuesday night’s home match against Silver Creek.
“Even though we didn’t come on top in any of the sets, there was improvement. I saw things we’re working on in practice starting to come through,” she said after the Dragons left the Lloyd E. Scott Gymnasium with a 25-14, 25-22, 25-12 win.
“We’re still young, we still make our errors, so we still have inconsistent points, too many points in a row, but there are things that are coming through, especially our net play tonight was much improved.” Birdsong said.
The Owls were 55-for-64 with 16 kills in attacks with Jessica Blevins having 7 kills, Peyton Levine had 5 kills and Emma Gillaspy had 4 kills.
The Owls were 40 of 45 with 3 aces in serves with Abby Schmidt, Blevins and Kate Snook having one ace each.
The Dragons scored the first five points in the opening set to lead all the way. After the Owls made it 5-2, the Dragons went on a 5-1 run with the only Seymour point in that string being a kill by Levine.
The Owls used a 3-0 run to cut the Dragons’ lead to 13-8 before the visitors scored six straight points to pull away.
An ace by Morgan Bobb tied the second set at 4-4 before the Dragons opened a 14-7 cushion.
The Owls charged back and cut Silver Creek’s lead to 19-18, and the home team trailed 21-19 following a kill by Zina Collins. Another kill by Levine left Seymour down 24-22 before the Dragons scored the set point.
The Dragons opened a 7-3 lead in the third set before Emily Corcoran served the Owls into a 7-7 tie. A kill by Blevins tied the score at 10-10 before the Dragons went on a 15-2 run to improve their record to 23-3.
“I think tonight there were a lot of long rallies that typically, in matches, we have not had this year,” Birdsong said. “We fought for a long time to stay in rallies, but I felt they always seemed to dominate the end of the rally to win the point.
“I felt we were going through a little bit stronger on trying to move balls and keep the ball in play better than we have in the past. Unfortunately our serve receive and our serving was a downside for us tonight which hasn’t been in the past.
“If we can get that put together with what we’ve had in past games with our net play tonight I think we’ll be better off. We weren’t able to get a complete block on their hitters but we were getting touches tonight that we had not been getting. Our blockers are closing now. We had some directional blocks with over passes and things we haven’t been able to capitalize in past games.”
Blevins had 3 block assists, Levine and Corcoran both had 2 block assists, and Snook had 1 solo and 3 block assists.
The Owls (5-19) will travel to New Albany Thursday for a Hoosier Hills Conference match, then will play in the Cougar Cup Saturday at Trinity Lutheran.
Trinity will play Jennings County at 9 a.m., and the Owls will play Perry Central at 10:10 am. Seymour will face Trinity in the final match at 3 p.m.