Ladies squeak by Shockers

The Lady Raiders came away with a victory Saturday at home against the Waterville Shockers, 3-2.

In the first game, Head Coach Nate Piturachsatit tried a different rotation with Kassadi Boutain, Samantha Turner, and Chyenne Kelly-Marconi in the game. During the first game the Lady Raiders played a solid game and came away with the victory on a service ace from Kassadi Boutain.

That carried over into the second game until the score was 22-12. The Shockers made a comeback and the Lady Raiders began making mistakes from inconsistent play and loss of focus. It looked as though the Lady Raiders had lost and the Shockers came back to win 26-24, but then the officials stated that the score was incorrect and the game started again with the same outcome. Again the officials spoke with the score table to clear up the problem. The Lady Raiders finally gained the win 27-25.

The LR slump that started in the second game carried on into the third and fourth games with the Lady Raiders dropping both. Instead of rolling over, the Lady Raiders pulled themselves up and in the fifth game reverted to the consistent focused play of the first to seal the match win 15-9.

“What it came down to at the end was a group of girls who could make a strong attack,” Piturachsatit said. “Waterville covered the court well and didn’t let balls drop; we couldn’t just sit there and wait for them to make a mistake. We needed to attack strong with solid serve and hits.”

Samantha Turner, in her first start, served nine for nine, impressing Piturachsatit. Hailey Chaney went 19 of 20 in serving, scoring six points. As a team, the Lady Raiders had 15 kills from 91 attacks. Piturachsatit said this is an area they want to improve this week.

“I need a player or two who can pick the rest of the team up and get them motivated,” he said.

Kelly-Marconi started in place of the injured Tanecia Stanczak and “did an excellent job of owning the net by making a few blocks and several nice attacks,” the coach said. “She has earned herself more playing time with her performance during this game.”

The Lady Raiders return to action at Manson tomorrow at 5 p.m., then travel to Soap Lake on Tuesday for a non-league match against the Eagles at 5:30 p.m.