The Manual volleyball team defeated the Central Yellowjackets on Thursday evening by a score of two sets to none.
Manual started off the first set with strong defensive plays, causing the Crimsons to take an early, commanding lead. Kiah Cox (#16, 11) and Karrington Jackson (#19, 11) fueled the Manual offense with fierce spikes.
As the set wore on Central’s defense stiffened, but it wasn’t enough to stop the surging Crimsons. Manual won the first set by a score of 25-12.
“We can always get better, there are always improvements and keeping our heads up more will help. We started out strong but quickly lost our heads for a little while and I think it is important to stay in the game,” Amanda McConnell (#7, 10) said.
The second match in the best-of-three series began with Central coming out of the attack. The Yellowjackets quickly jumped out to a 6-2 lead.
Manual slowly climbed back in the second set. During a time-out Central Head Coach Janelle Jenkins gave a speech to her players that talked about their determination and to put that out on the court.
“We need to believe in ourselves that we can dominate these kind of teams, just because we are Central and people have doubted us in the past, doesn’t mean that we play like that. We are the underdogs and we need to start believing we can take over,” Jenkins said after the game.
Ultimately, Manual came back on won the set, claiming victory in the match.
According to Manual Head Coach Tim O’Connell, “The better team did not win tonight, they wanted it more than us. We need to work on everything and get more fired up when playing with a smaller crowd.”
Central’s Forever Reed (#11) continuously provided powerful offensive and defensive plays including spikes and stops which helped her team throughout the game.
“We pushed hard tonight, we could have pushed harder, but I am proud of my team. Manual played great, I think we could have won it but it was a good game,” Reed said.
Here is a video of one of many strong offensive plays made by Manual’s Kiah Cox (#16, 11).
Communication was a big factor for Manual tonight as they got stuck in some awkward situations where Central had many offensive plays, but brought themselves back through positivity and willpower.
“We were playing a team that we didn’t exactly have high expectations for so we didn’t play our best. We played lower so I think we can improve on our mental toughness and mentality for the next game,” Olivia Wolf (#13, 12).
The Lady Crimsons will face off against Ballard next Tuesday at home.
