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The fall season got underway officially last Thursday, August 26 with a volleyball triangular with Bedford and Central Decatur visiting Mount Ayr for the occasion.
The Raiderettes looked to get off on the right foot this season, defeating Central Decatur last year but falling to Bedford.
This season, the Raiderettes came out on top after hard-fought victories against the Bedford Bulldogs and Central Decatur Cardinals.
The first game of the night was between conference foes Mount Ayr and Bedford.
Bedford came out hot, putting the Raiderettes down 6-1 before a time out was called by coach Kristen Graham.
The timeout looked to work as the Mount Ayr squad added two more to their score before eventually knotting things up at 7.
The set went back-and-forth before the Raiderettes eventually took the win, 25-23.
Set two was more of the same back-and-forth between the Raiderettes and Bulldogs, but the Raiderette squad got together and pulled out another 25-23 win.
Being a conference contest, the game would go best three-out-of-five.
Mount Ayr only needed one more to take the inaugural win, however, the Bulldogs weren’t going to let that happen.
Bedford took set three by a score of 25-20 before tying things up in a heated set four that went to the Bulldogs 29-27.
A passionate speech by coach Graham and coach Brandie Ruggles fired the girls up as they came out in what would be the last set of the game.
Mount Ayr won 15-7 to take the first win of the season.
The Raiderettes got a break as Bedford would stay on the floor and face the Central Decatur Cardinals.
Bedford would go on to defeat the Cardinals 2-1.
The Raiderettes would then take the court to face the Cardinals.
This game would go to the winner of best-of-three.
The Cardinals would go up 7-4 early in the contest, before Mount Ayr kicked into gear and tied the contest up at nine.
The game would be much like the Raiderettes against Bedford, a tug-of-war.
The Raiderettes took a 20-17 lead and would outscore the Cardinals 5-2 in the next seven serves to take the win on an Addy Reynolds spike that looked to hit the floor at the speed of light.
Central Decatur snagged the first point in game two, but the Raiderettes rallied back to a 5-3 lead before getting a little more cushion after Linsie Barnes had a kill to put the Raiderettes up 10-4.
Game two would go to the Raiderettes by a score of 25-14, putting Mount Ayr at 2-0 on the season overall.
Against Central Decatur, Kaylie Shields and Hayden Ruggles led the team in assists with six each, while the team recorded 14 and Addy Reynolds and Payten Lambert led the team in kills with eight and five, respectively.
Maddie Stewart led the team in digs with eight.
Tegan Streit was seven-for-seven and one ace from the line, while Addy Reynolds recorded 10-of-12 with three aces and Olivia Huntington was 12-of-13 with one ace.
“We’ve been doing a lot of team culture building and just making sure our girls are always positive, not being negative and turning on eachother,” said coach Kristen Graham. “Brandie brings excellent feedback to everything that we are doing. I feel like our girls play well together and are having fun and taking things from practice and applying it in the game.”
The Raiderettes looked like a completely different team than the one that was on the court last season.
“Our seniors are our leaders. What you see on the floor is a true testament of what our seniors are,” said coach Brandie Ruggles. “Their goal is to bring in the idea of total teamwork. They understand you have to put a lot of work into it.”
Coach Ruggles spent a lot of time with the volleyball squad on the softball field as well and was able to apply some things learned on the diamond, to the court.
“Our girls have played volleyball but the understanding of the game is nowhere near the softball level,” said coach Ruggles. “There’s been times when I have told them they study hitters in softball, you know what they do, you understand defenses, it’s the same idea in this sport too. We have thrown a lot at them about the game and they absorb it and they have applied that. What you saw is volleyball language and knowledge on the floor.”
You can see Mount Ayr back in action against Essex in Mount Ayr tonight, September 2.
Stats
1 2 3 4 5 T
Mount Ayr 25 25 – – – 2
C.Decatur 19 14 – – – 0
KLS-ATT AST BLK SER-ACE
Shields 0-0 6 0 5-7-2
Reynolds 8-11 1 0 10-12-3
Lambert 5-13 0 0 0-0-0
Streit 3-8 1 1 7-7-1
Huntington 0-0 0 0 12-13-1
Ruggles 0-0 6 0 1-2-0
L.Barnes 2-6 0 0 0-0-0
Larsen 1-2 0 1 0-0-0
H.Barnes 2-7 0 0 2-4-1
Stewart 1-3 0 0 3-3-0
Team 22-50 14 2 40-48-8
