XENIA — Xenia claimed a 25-8, 25-20, 25-15 win over the visiting Wilmington Hurricane Monday night in a non-league volleyball match on the Greene County court.
Xenia is the defending Greater Western Ohio Conference American South-division champion.
The third and final set featured a Buccaneers lineup violation that took about 5 or so minutes for match officials to re-organize. When Xenia (1-0) was finally in its proper rotation, they fended off Wilmington’s 10-8 rally the rest of the way to claim the match.
Wilmington coach Jordan Watson was encouraged by how her youthful Hurricane bunch was able to battle back after the 25-8 first-set loss.
“I thought we started out pretty weak in that first set,” she said. “We just couldn’t finish the set. We got stuck in a couple rotations due to good servers for Xenia. But we definitely came out and picked up the pace in the second and third sets, and we were able to finish strong,” she said.
Set two was all even at 18 points apiece, before Xenia closed with a 7-2 run.
Xenia jumped out to a 16-4 lead in the third set, but Wilmington battled back to within 19-14 on a Riley Flint kill.
Watson wouldn’t single out any players who performed well in the match. She said the team already knew what they would be working on in Tuesday’s practice.
“I thought we played well as a team, but there weren’t too many shining stars in this match. But everyone did put their points in,” she said.
Nyla Bailey and Flint showed solid net play for the Hurricane (0-1), and Courtney Smart came up with a third-set service ace that started a six-point Wilmington rally. Kaylee Tackett bashed a winning kill during that run. But Wilmington was whistled for six carry violations in the final two sets.
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