It’s been an up-and-down season for the Bradford volleyball team so far this year.
The Lady Owls have had some solid wins and some tough losses. But on Thursday, Bradford came up with perhaps its most impressive performance of the season.
After dropping the opening two sets to Elk County Catholic (5-4 overall), the Lady Owls came roaring back to claim the final three sets to win 25-27, 20-25, 25-8, 25-16, 15-8.
“This was a full-team effort,” BHS coach Steve Daniels said. “Of course the stats will show a couple people had highs and lows, but (it was the) full team. So much balance.”
Indeed, the Lady Owls (5-6 overall) had some impressive individual totals as you would expect from such a long, hard-fought match: Laney Kahle registered an impressive 32 assists, Alexis Huber (13) and Ashton Himes (10) both had double-digit kills, and Erica Marshall notched nine digs.
While Bradford did end up dropping the first two games, the Lady Owls actually got off to good starts in each set.
Bradford was hitting the ball with authority from the outset to race out to an 11-4 advantage. However, several costly mishaps allowed the Lady Crusaders to win eight points in a row and go up 12-11.
The entire first set featured a number of very close, tightly-contested points.
At one point Bradford held a 24-21 lead and seemed to poise to go up 1-0 in the match. But ECC responded to this adversity with some authority of its own and won six of the next seven points to take the set.
As the second set began, there was once again very little separation between the two sides. Both teams had their share of good shots while also making a few mental errors.
The Crusaders were by no means dominating, but they were able to make one or two more key plays than the Owls. It was enough to take the set 25-20 for a 2-0 lead in the match.
With their backs up against the wall, Bradford needed to respond or risk getting blown out. The Lady Owls were up to the task, racing out to a 5-1 lead and then eventually going up 17-7. Like ECC earlier in the match, Bradford wasn’t dominating by any means. But the Owls did a better job of limiting their mistakes and started converting on the chances they were missing earlier.
“The big thing was serve/receive and defense,” Daniels said about the team’s improvement over the course of the match. “The first couple games we got up big, we were nice and low and we were streamlined through everything. But then all of a sudden we decided we wanted to stand up; it wasn’t laziness, we just weren’t seeing the court very well.”
The fourth set saw more of the same from Bradford. Once again, the Owls were doing just enough right and ECC was making just enough mistakes for Bradford to take advantage.
Another strong start saw the Owls begin with a 13-6 lead and never waver to send the match to a decisive fifth set.
It was evident by this point that all the momentum lay with Bradford. The Owls won seven of the first eight points in the set. Bradford’s players were striking the ball with authority, bringing the loud home crowd to its feet on more than a few occasions.
While the match ended with a couple very close calls that had ECC visibly upset, there’s no doubt that Bradford had absolutely earned its comeback victory.
When asked if we wanted to make note of anyone in particular after the match, Daniels simply smiled and said, “Everybody.”
Bradford will be back in action on Tuesday when the Owls host Sheffield.
