Warriors sweep Saints on senior night

By Allen Etzler
Published in Sports on October 15, 2014 1:48 PM

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As the third set began the seniors on the Eastern Wayne volleyball team begged coach Jackie Lewis to let them back on to the court.

This was the last regular-season game they would get to play together.

So for the final five points Lewis put Tricia Bell, Sara Rice, Casey Young and Jenna Rouse back on the court.

Led by four straight aces from Young, the Warriors put the finishing touches on a 25-13, 25-14, 25-22 sweep of cross county and Eastern Carolina 3-A/4-A rival Southern Wayne on Tuesday evening.

Eastern Wayne faces county archrival Charles B. Aycock today on Southern Wayne's court. The winner earns the No. 1 seed -- and first-round home game -- from the 3-A portion of the Eastern Carolina Conference for the N.C. High School Athletic Association playoffs.

First serve is 5 p.m.

Young and her strong serving almost took care of business on her own, but Southern Wayne was able to scratch out two more points. The match ended on an unforced error, one of 28 committed by the Saints on the day.

"I kept thinking 'man she's not going to let anyone else touch the ball,'" Lewis said. "She looked like she was going to do it all on her own, but it was a great team victory and these girls played very well tonight."

Young was just happy for the opportunity.

"It was emotional tonight," she said. "It was nice to be able to be on the court at the end because this is (one of the) last times we'll be on the court together with girls I played with my whole life."

Young served six of the Warriors' team 24 aces. It was the best serving performance of the season for Eastern Wayne, and the success was attributed to work on the practice court finally transferring over to the game.

"We've been serving a lot in practice," Lewis said. "And we've been running for serving balls into the net, and that's helped us a lot and it paid off tonight."

Rouse contributed five kills, seven assists, and three aces during her senior night. Rice had three aces, three aces and two kills. Bell had two aces.

The Warriors started sluggishly in the first two games and were tied at 7-7 in each set. But they responded with runs of 18-6, and 18-7 to take control of the match.

Eastern Wayne came out a little too relaxed in the third set again and trailed 8-2 before Lewis called a timeout to get her team back under control.

"She just told us to get back to what we were doing and we knew we were going to be fine," Rice said.

Southern Wayne's Amone Brown led the Saints with four kills and five digs. The Saints played well in spurts, but failed to put together a full set to get a win -- a trend assistant coach Kelvin Gurley said has plagued them all year.

"We've been slow starters for a lot of the season," Gurley said. "It's taken a few games to get our feet wet, and that happened again tonight but these girls battled hard and showed a lot of fight."