LADY BULLDOGS BOUNCE RAIDERS

SALEM, OH- The South Range volleyball team’s season came to an end Tuesday night with a 4 set loss to East Palestine (25-17 17-25 23-25 21-25)

In the first set it appeared the Raiders had control of the match, all their servers were hitting their spots and East Palestine was getting very little offense back over. Senior Jenna Barbessi made her presence felt early tallying 5 kills in set 1, and the Raiders hit .219 in the set with 12 kills total.

In the second set however, the Bulldogs really turned up their defense. They forced the Raiders into more and more empty attacks, and that in turn lead to Raider attack errors starting to pop up. The Raiders who had just 4 attack errors in set 1 surrendered 9 of them in set 2 along with 5 service errors. The Bulldogs took set 2 17-25.

Set 3 was the most competitive one of the night. The Raiders jumped out to a strong 12-6 lead the Palestine fought back and eventually got it to a tie set at 17-17. Still tied at 22-22 the Bulldogs came up with some clutch plays to close out set 3 23-25.

The Bulldogs got a massive lead in set 4, as it seemed all the wheels had fallen off for the Raiders. Trailing 10-23 the Raiders went on a 7-0 run to make it 17-23, and then fought off another 3 match points to make it 20-24 and force a Bulldog timeout. The Raiders got another point out of the timeout but then sent a serve long to deal East Palestine’s victory 21-25.

Jenna Barbessi did everything she could to prevent this being her last game with a season high 17 kills and 4 digs. Anna Primavera added 10 kills and 5 digs and Abby George finished with 6 kills 4 blocks and 3 digs. Emily Irons had 21 assists on the night, while Drew Ferren had 13 assists and 10 digs, recording a double double. Barbessi hit .289 on the night and Primavera hit .130. Even with those numbers the Raiders only hit .078 as a team.

The Raiders close the season at 11-12 (8-6) Mary Kuhns shattered the digs in a season record that was previously 430 with 528 digs on the season. She also tied the digs in a match record with 47. Mary was named 2nd team all district. Anna Primavera tied the aces in a match record with 9, and finished with a team high 248 kills on the season.