After falling to River Bluff 2-0 in the North-South Invitational in Rock Hill on Aug. 19, the Lexington Wildcats delivered payback with a 3-0 win at River Bluff Sept. 14 during region play.

The first set was a thrilling back and forth affair that mirrored the two close sets back in Rock Hill. Lexington survived the first set 25-23 despite multiple lead changes and an excellent atmosphere that accurately reflected tension of the rivalry.

The second start started similarly to the first but a late Lexington push in the back half of the set helped the Wildcats win 25-16 convincingly and made the possibility of a straight sets win likely.

Head coach Eric Shick and his Wildcats team continued to harness the momentum from the second set and despite River Bluff making it close early in the set, still found a way to win the set and the match 25-17.

“Coming in here, it’s tough to play River Bluff,” Shick said after the game. “The rivalry at their place is always tough. They always bring a lot of good fans, which they got kind of quieted tonight. But, once we battled through that first [set] we relaxed a little bit and started to play to their potential.”

Shick was impressed by the way his team managed to keep River Bluff from being comfortable and playing a game that is more advantageous for them.
“I felt like we served really well. We kept them out of system a good amount which really helps,” Shick said. “I thought we passed and received well and hitting is always an important thing. But it helps when you pass well to get all three options going and we had that going tonight for the most part.”

The win moves Lexington to 19-5-1 on the season overall and 2-0 in region play.

For River Bluff, the loss drops the team to 1-1 in region play and 14-7-2 overall. Gators head coach Bryan Piro said there are still some areas he would like to see his team clean up on before getting further in region play and that some of those mistakes were costly against Lexington, especially in that first set.

“We’re just making a couple of bad errors,” Piro said. “We had two hitting errors when we were after 20 points, we didn’t control a dig like we should have with an easy ball coming over, we’re out of position on a block and so we had four errors in the last 20 points that we can correct and if we actually executed, we could have won that set probably. Then after that first set, we tried to correct a few things on the second. They changed their rotation a little bit on that second set which, we did as well. Eric’s a good coach and he knows what he’s doing and it comes down to strategy and they got the best of us tonight.”

Lexington continued region play this week with a straight sets win against White Knoll at home on Sept.19. River Bluff will continue region play Thursday Sept. 21 at Dutch Fork.