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Williamsport volleyball plays great down stretch to sweep Troy 3-0

By GARRETT CARR 4 min read

Williamsport cruised through the first two sets of its home match against defending District 4 champion Troy with little trouble. The Millionaires found themselves in unfamiliar territory in the third set when the visiting Trojans rallied for a 15-13 lead.

But Williamsport played its best volleyball of the match down the stretch, overcoming the deficit to earn the sweep over Troy, 3-0 (25-13, 25-18, 25-21).

Williamsport coach Patti Jones called a timeout when the Millionaires fell behind and she had a timely message for her team.

"Just to minimize mistakes and continue to bring each other (up) when they make a mistake. I wanted to make adjustments and kind of ice their server a little bit," Jones said. "We were getting caught, so we had to figure out what kind of adjustments we could make. One of our back rows stepped back a bit, and she got a really good pass, which set up our offense. It starts with the pass, and we know this.

"We've been really working on getting that pass because then we have all of our offensive weapons available,' Jones continued.

Williamsport was swept in its first match of the year by Berwick, but have since won six sets in a row.

"We tried to work on minimizing our mistakes and bringing ourselves up. It seemed like in the Berwick game, we kind of got down and then we lost our momentum," Jones said. "So I think really working on keeping that momentum, keeping our energy up, as the girls would say, really helped us. When we made mistakes, and we made a lot of mistakes, we tried to minimize those and then just adjust when we made them."

Williamsport cut down on mistakes significantly on Tuesday, especially early in sets. After getting out to a 6-3 lead in the first set, the Millionaires ran off six of the next seven points to take a commanding lead, and cruised home to win the first set, 25-13.

Once again, the Millionaires hopped out to a big lead in the second set and a kill and ace back-to-back by Jenna Schmidt put Williamsport up, 12-6. Schmidt was one of many Millionaires to contribute offensively on Tuesday.

Pippy Kieser had a team-high 12 kills, Mollie Roan led Williamsport with 15 service points, Libby Radspinner and Peyton Dincher each had 10 assists and Kadence Smith had a team-high seven digs.

Troy was led by Haidyn Watson’s six kills, Liana Lyon’s five assists and Alli Bailey’s five digs.

"I have a lot of really good front-row hitters. There's a lot of power to spread it out and they just make smart plays," Jones said. "We can run people from the back row, too. We've got a couple that we key on. Everybody can bring some heat when they need to."

Williamsport would close the second set on a kill by Kieser to win 25-18, but the third set was a bit different than the first two. The Millionaires jumped out to a small lead early on at 6-3, but Troy kept itself within striking distance and ran off five straight points at 13-10 to take a 15-13 lead.

Williamsport rallied after the timeout and scored eight of the next nine points to go up, 21-16, capped off by a kill from Ava Fischer. Troy would rally back to make it 23-21, but Williamsport won the final two points of the match to take it in three sets.

Williamsport 3, Troy 0

(25-13, 25-18, 25-21)

Williamsport kills: Pippy Kieser 12. Williamsport service points: Mollie Roan 15. Williamsport assists: Peyton Dincher 10, Libby Radspinner 10. Williamsport digs: Kadence Smith 7. Troy kills: Haidyn Watson 6. Troy service points: Liana Lyon 3. Troy assists: Liana Lyon 5. Troy digs: Alli Bailey 5.

Starting at /week.