Morgan Naylor of the Raiders serves an ace on Monday at Harnett Central.
(Dunn Area Sports Photo/John Lucas)
Midway’s varsity volleyball team remained unbeaten on the season with a 3-0 win at Harnett Central by scores of 25-17, 27-25 and 25-17 on Monday.
“Still not playing to the greatest potential that they have,” said Midway coach Susan Clark. “We did a terrible job on our serves tonight. But they pulled out a win.”
Harnett Central coach Ashley Gaines said her young team has seen improvement over the past week but needs to continue working.
“Still a long way to go,” Gaines said. “Which is both a good thing and a bad thing. We’ve been working really hard on serve receive. You’ve got to win the serve pass game in volleyball. And we don’t really have anybody right now that can just jump and put the ball inside the 10-foot line. So, we’re working really hard on our defense and making sure we can dig every ball up that’s possible to get us a chance on offense and just being smart offensively.
Junior Morgan Hall had 14 kills and two blocks, senior Jaycie Byrd had a double-double, with 14 assists and 15 digs, and junior McKenzie Williams had 22 digs to lead the Raiders (3-0).
Clark was also pleased with the play of junior Bella Barefoot. She had six kills, one assist, two blocks and one dig.
“She was lights out from the right side,” Clark said. “And she swung a couple of times from outside. She was on, so we tried to push it to her as much as we could.”
Blair Baggett had seven kills, one assist, one block, 11 digs and two aces on eight service points. Kaedyn Moran had four kills, six digs and one ace on 10 service points. Morgan Williams had four kills and two digs. Brianna Knowles had three kills, two blocks and two digs and held serve for three points. Byrd had two kills and held serve for five points. Morgan Naylor had 19 assists, three digs and two aces on seven service points. Mallory Baggett had two assists, five digs and one ace. McKenzie Williams had two assists and held serve for one point. Hall had four digs and one ace on three service points.
Freshman Ava Faucette had seven kills and 10 digs, senior Carlie Love had a double-double, with 16 assists and 13 digs and senior Elle Gardner had 17 digs to lead the Trojans (0-4).
Allie Williams had five kills, 12 digs and one ace on six service points. Savannah Bain had four kills, one assist, two blocks and two digs and held serve for one point. Mya Lewis had three kills, two blocks and two digs. Love had two kills. Ashley Bliven had one assist, eight digs and one ace on four service points. Kelsey Cofield had one assist and seven digs and held serve for two points. Faucette had one assist and two aces on four service points. Ashley Bliven had eight digs and one ace on four service points. Novie Womack had two digs. Victoria Langdon had one dig.
“We’ve had to make quite a few changes,” Gaines said. “Savannah has set for me the past two years on JV and that was the plan going into the season, but we’ve transferred her to the middle and she’s done a great job learning the position, getting touches on some balls, blocking some balls and putting the ball down. Same thing with Mya. Mya was on varsity last year but didn’t really play much. You’ll see on the outside she’ll put a ball away in a heartbeat. And then my freshmen, Ava and Allie, they’re all over the place. They’re going to hit and they’re going to hit hard and nine times out of 10, they’re going to be smart and they’re going to score the ball.”
The first set was tied 9-9 when Midway went on a 10-1 run to take control and later won the set 25-17.
The second set was closely contested throughout, going to extra points. With the score tied 25-25, a Morgan Williams kill, assisted by Byrd, and a Hall block gave the Raiders the set.
Holding a 9-8 lead in the last set, Midway went on a 6-2 run to take control of the set, going on to win 25-17 to finish off the match.
Midway won the junior varsity match, 2-1.
Harnett Central travels to Union Pines (1-1) on Wednesday.
“We’re making sure we’re playing teams that are going to make us work really hard,” Gaines said. “Going into conference, we wanted to make sure we were already seeing teams that were going to play tough volleyball, because we know we’re going to see that in conference and we want to prepare for postseason and what that looks like. I want the girls to be competitive and see good volleyball and so I want to see them match up with teams like that.”
Midway travels to Cape Fear (1-0) on Wednesday before returning home to face Sampson County foe Lakewood on Thursday. Thursday’s match is varsity only and was moved up to 3:30 p.m. because Midway has open house for returning students Thursday night.
“If we play to the level of our competition and they step it up, you never know what could happen,” Clark said.
Kaedyn Moran makes a kill for Midway in a 3-0 road win.
(Dunn Area Sports Photo/John Lucas)
Bella Barefoot gets a point for Midway with a kill.
(Dunn Area Sports Photo/John Lucas)
Carlie Love of Harnett Central dives for a dig on Monday.
(Dunn Area Sports Photo/John Lucas)
Mya Lewis gets a kill for host Harnett Central.
(Dunn Area Sports Photo/John Lucas)
Savannah Bain gets a kill for Harnett Central.
(Dunn Area Sports Photo/John Lucas)
Brianna Knowles scores on a kill in Midway’s 3-0 road win.
(Dunn Area Sports Photo/John Lucas)
Elle Gardner makes a dig for Harnett Central in Monday’s nonconference match.
(Dunn Area Sports Photo/John Lucas)
Morgan Hall of Midway gets the final point of the match.
(Dunn Area Sports Photo/John Lucas)
