Staff report
TROY — The Russia Lady Raiders pulled off the first upset of the Division 4 Sectional Volleyball Tournament, beating Riverside 3-0 Wednesday at Troy.
The scores were 25-9, 26-24, 25-13, and the win advanced the No. 9-seeded Lady Raiders, 13-11, to the sectional finals on Saturday against either Botkins or Southeastern, who played the second game Tuesday.
Riverside, the No. 5 seed, ends an excellent season at 18-5.
“We played great tonight,” said Russia coach Aaron Watkins. “The girls showed up and executed what we wanted them to. I couldn’t be prouder of the effort from everybody tonight.”
Laurissa Poling had 11 kills to lead Russia’s offense, Chris Gaerke added nine and Claudia Counts had six. All three had two blocks apiece.
Whitney Pleiman again led the defense with 28 digs, Jenna Cordonnier had 27 assists and eight digs, Chloe Sherman had eight digs and Katie Swartz eight digs.
Loramie 3, Tri-County North 0
ARCANUM — Second-seeded Fort Loramie advanced to the sectional finals with a 3-0 win over Tri-County North Wednesday at Arcanum.
The scores were 25-14, 25-6, 25-11, and it put the Lady Redskins at 16-8 on the year heading into the sectional finals Saturday against either TV South or Covington.
Statistics were not available.
Tuesday
Lehman 3, MV 0
ARCANUM — It didn’t take long for Sidney Chapman to set the trend in Lehman volleyball tournament opener Tuesday at Arcanum High School.
And the rest of the Lady Cavaliers did more than their share as well as Lehman cruised to a 25-18, 25-12, 25-9 win over Mississinawa Valley.
Lehman, 13-10, will play Legacy Christian at 7:30 p.m. tonight in second-round action.
“It’s always nice to get that first tournament win,” Lehman coach Greg Snipes said.
With Camille Odle serving, Chapman pounded kills on the first four points as Lehman would lead the entire set.
“Sidney was unstoppable,” Snipes said. “You want the other girls to step up so teams can’t sit on her and when they had the chance tonight, I thought they did a good job of that.”
The second set was tied 3-3 before a Chapman kill started a big Lehman run. With Chapman and Hussey at the service line, Lehman went on a 9-1 run to open a 12-4 lead.
The momentum continued into the third set in an amazing way. Hailey Wick stepped to the service line and served 16 straight points to start the set. Four of them were aces.
“That was great by Hailey,” Snipes said. “Obviously, we know she is a good server. But to serve aggressively like that for 16 straight serves and not miss one was pretty impressive.”
Chapman, who had 18 kills, exited after a kill to make it 20-3 and Lehman finished things off from there.
McFarland dished out 16 assists and Madison Hussey had 10 digs.
