Peyton Herring swings the ball back over the net.
Daron Barefoot|Sampson Independent
Kaedyn Moran passes the ball to a teammate.
Daron Barefoot|Sampson Independent
Graycn Hall digs out a served ball.
Daron Barefoot|Sampson Independent
It’s volleyball playoff time across the state — a time that’s always particularly exciting for the Midway Lady Raiders. As has happened quite a few times, they were the undisputed and undefeated champions of the Southeastern Athletic Conference this season and again claimed for themselves the No. 2 seed in the NCHSAA 2A East Region playoffs. With the playoffs getting underway on Tuesday evening, Midway welcomed in the No. 31 seed West Craven, who entered the contest at 9-13 overall and fourth place finishers in the Eastern Plains 2A Conference at 6-6 overall. When all was said and done, Midway defended home court and advanced to Thursday’s second round with a 3-0 victory.
The Lady Raiders got a nice start to the game by building a quick advantage of 9-2. Midway was getting solid attacks for big kills but the Lady Eagles were also self-inflicting wounds. All of this culminated in a timeout as the set was slowly getting away from the visitors. When the action resumed, a couple points landed West Craven’s way but the Lady Raiders continued to be dominant. The big swingers of Midway were proving problematic for the Lady Eagles and the Lady Raiders’ lead reached 15-5. At 21-7, West Craven spent their final timeout of the set. From there, Midway went on to win 25-8 and took a 1-0 victory in the match.
In the second set, the Lady Raiders ran out to a quick and emphatic 3-0 lead. A surge of momentum found its way into the Lady Eagles and they surged to a 6-3 lead before a serve out of bounds finally slowed them down. After the timeout, West Craven continued to hold the lead and at 11-9 a timeout was called by Midway. When play resumed, they finally ran the visitors down at 16-all then reclaimed the lead at 17-16. With the Lady Raiders now leading 20-16, the Lady Eagles spent a timeout, hoping to regroup. Instead, Midway’s lead reached 23-16 and West Craven burnt their last timeout, searching for a rally. They did manage three straight points but the Lady Raiders claimed the set, 25-19, to go up 2-0 in the match.
Deja-vu greeted Midway in the third set as they watched another 3-0 lead quickly dissolve to a 3-3 tie. This time they recovered, though, and put the lead back at 5-3. From there, the lead grew to 11-4 which was good enough for another West Craven timeout. The lead eventually grew to 16-6 and the Lady Raiders could smell the second round. Indeed, they went on to secure the 25-10 victory and triumph with a 3-0 win.
After the game, Midway head coach Susan Clark liked some things she saw in the game but did note that she’d like to clean some things up ahead of the next game.
“The first went pretty good, but I think we went into the second set a little too confident,” Clark said. “We made some mistakes in the second set that we didn’t in the first but we just had to settle in and regroup. The girls had fun tonight, maybe a little too much fun at times, but I was proud that some things we’ve worked on in practice came to fruition.”
As usual, Kaedyn Moran led the Lady Raiders with 12 kills but behind her, Sam Carter also had a nice game with 10 kills. Cailyn Hewlett also had 10 kills and Gracyn Hall had seven. Ella Clark had 28 assists and Peyton Herring had four blocks.
With the win, the Lady Raiders are now 19-3 overall and were set to face Bunn in the second on Thursday.