By Garth Shanklin
The Ripley Bee
ipley’s girls volleyball team entered a home match up with Manchester on Wednesday, Sept. 8 looking to improve to 2-2 overall in the Southern Hills Athletic Conference.
The visiting Lady Greyhounds had other plans, taking the match in three sets (25-21, 25-16, 25-17).
Both teams started out fairly evenly matched. The first set was tied at nine, though shortly after Ripley pulled ahead 13-9.
Manchester fought back, tying the set at 15. The teams were tied again at 21 before the Lady Greyhounds scored the final four points to pick up the win.
“In the beginning of the game, I really thought we were coming out strong,” Ripley head coach Morgan Johnson said.”They were hyped up, excited to get to play in their home gym. They just get in their own heads and then they give up. It’s frustrating for them and for me as a coach because I know their potential, I know they’re much better than what they showed tonight. I thought we could carry over last night’s five-set win. But there are more games to come, I have high hopes.”
In the second set, Manchester used a 9-1 run to pull away and never looked back. An 11-3 lead turned into a 25-16 win.
“This was the first game in the last few games that we had everybody on the floor playing the position that was assigned to them,” Manchester head coach Crystal Roberts said. “Overall, we did well.”
In the third set, Manchester jumped ahead 5-1. Ripley called timeout at 15-6 and cut the margin to 19-12, but Manchester closed out the set to take the match 3-0.
Manchester’s ability to answer the Lady Jays’ run is something Roberts believes the team does well.
“Regardless if it’s 10, five, seven, they don’t give up,” Roberts said. “They fight…that’s what we do. If we make a mistake, we own it, we overcome it, learn from it and move on.”
Statistically, Manchester had a 63.4 kill percentage. The team tallied 26 kills and Maggie Roberts finished with 26 assists.
“We looked good on the back row, passing,” Roberts said. “You have to have those three good touches in order to get back to where we want to get the point. We had good passes going to our setter, she was doing what she needed to do. Get them up, get them to our hitters. Our hitters were executing the hits.”
Hannah Hobbs tallied 10 kills to lead Manchester. Harley Rideout had three aces and Kameyl Carter had three blocks.
For Ripley, Johnson said the Lady Jays had too many balls fall in between players.
“There were more miscommunications than I expected tonight,” Johnson said. “When our setter calls help and people just expect someone next to them to get the ball, that can’t happen. I need leaders, I need someone who is going to be hungry for the ball.”
Ripley finished with five aces as a team. Olivia Dragoo had two while Riley Finn, Brooke Sims and Harmony Fowler had one each.
“Serving was much better tonight,” Johnson said. “We didn’t miss many serves, we served strong.”
Olivia Hutchison had three blocks for Ripley. Sims also had 14 assists. Rose Eckler tallied 17 digs with Sims adding 10.
The loss dropped Ripley to 3-4 on the season, 1-3 in league play.
“We’ve had our ups and downs,” Johnson said. “It’s about wanting to finish games. Last year, we would have given up before the game started because of the name of the team….We can’t want to play some games and not the others because we lost against them last year. I think we focus on last year or past seasons of teams that beat us back in the day.”
Manchester is slated to host Peebles on Thursday, Sept. 16, an all-county SHAC battle.