By Wendi Reardon Price
Clarkston News Sports Writer
LAKE ORION — It was a nail biting, heart pounding finish to the end as the Clarkston Varsity Volleyball defeated Lake Orion in a OAA Red battle last Thursday, 3-0.
The Wolves took the first two sets of the night 25-18 and 28-26.
“We came out really ready to go maybe almost too high,” said Ali Smith, head coach for Clarkston. “We got that early lead. We have really been working on it, but I think we got a little complacent for a while.”
“We were very flat starting out in the first set,” said Tony Scavarda, Lake Orion head coach. “Some of our players we count on for certain things just didn’t have it going tonight. We picked it up better in the second and third sets but not to the level we would normally play.”
Lake Orion opened the third set with two points. They built onto their lead with hits from Devin Brunk and Charlotte Peplowski until Clarkston called a time out with Dragons leading 10-4.
Coming out of the time out, the Wolves closed the lead with points from Rylee Hunt, Addison Newblatt and Marlie Smith. Clarkston was one point behind when Lake Orion called the next time out, 15-14.
“They are an incredibly well coached team,” Smith said. “Tony always throws out everything he can think of which is sometimes you never know what you are going to get with them. On top of the fact that this rivalry runs super deep for both schools.”
The Dragons jumped to a two point lead before Cayla Cogan and Newblatt scored two points to tie, 16-16. Seconds later it was tied 17-17 and the Dragons began to pull ahead again with hits from Brunk and Lilah Eliassen, going up 24-20.
“Lilah was unstoppable in the middle tonight,” Scavarda said. “The problem is we just didn’t pass enough consistently to get her enough balls. But when we did pass good and got her a set, she was pretty much unstoppable.”
An error on Lake Orion’s end brought Clarkston up a point before M. Smith scored three consecutive points to tie the set, 24-24.
Eliassen bought Lake Orion up to 25-24. Seconds later, errors on both ends of the court put the score 26-26.
“We were in a great position and we made some key mental mistakes at the end of that third set,” said Scavarda.
Cogan had a kill to bring the Wolves into the lead, 27-26 before they won the set 28-26 when Lake Orion’s return hit went out.
“We haven’t seen a lot of teams that have pushed us a lot lately,” Smith said. “I have to give Devon credit. She’s a gamer. She’s great defensively. She caught fire as the match went on, and we had to make some adjustments.”
Scavarda shared this game and future games are getting the Dragons ready for the post season.
“Everything we are doing at this point is to get ready for districts,” he said. “We know we have to get past Clarkston in the districts so tonight was a practice for that – see what they are doing, see what we can get better against them and try to improve on that when we see them in the post season.”
The Dragons opened the week against Oxford at home on Tuesday.
“You never know in the OAA,” said Scavarda. “We are very much a roller coaster team this year. We play great and then we play not so great. But, we got them here on our home court and it’s Senior Night for us so I expect us to come out big.
They head to Rochester Adams on Thursday.