Photo by Ashley Akers
The Blue Ridge District volleyball tournament will be held at the highest remaining seed Thursday night and the Lord Botetourt girls are hoping that it’s in Daleville. The girls come into the tournament as the top seed.
Tournament play opened Monday but LB had a bye. On Tuesday the Cavaliers were scheduled to host Staunton River while William Byrd, the second seed, was home against Franklin County. Tuesday’s winners will play for the tournament championship Thursday, and if the Cavaliers won Tuesday they’ll be home.
Botetourt comes into the tournament on a roll. The girls finished with a perfect 10-0 record in BRD regular season games and they’re 16-4 overall. After opening the season with three wins in their first seven games the Cavaliers have ripped off 13 straight to close the regular season, including three wins last week.
“The team had another great week,” said coach Julie Conner. “I am so proud of the team for winning the district and picking up a big win at Auburn. We are excited and looking forward to the postseason.”
Botetourt opened last week with a hard-fought four-set win over a tough Franklin County team. The rivals split the first two sets with LB winning, 25-19, and the Eagles winning the second set, 25-21. LB then finished strong with 25-13 and 25-20 wins to put the Eagles away. Becca Huddleston had 19 kills, Nora Spickard and Emma Rice had 13 kills each and Skylar Morris had 51 assists.
On Wednesday of last week the Cavaliers traveled to Riner to take on another Eagles team, Auburn, in what is traditionally one of the highlight matches of the season. The Eagles are annual state contenders in Class 1 and they’re coached by Sherry Millirons, Julie Conner’s sister. Julie had never beaten Sherry in a high school match despite having several state championship teams at LB and the Cavalier players were anxious to make it happen for their coach.
The match didn’t start off great for Lord Botetourt, as Auburn won the first set, 25-20, and it appeared to be business as usual. However, the Cavaliers bounced back to win the next three in a row by scores of 25-18, 25-21 and 25-16 to make Julie a winner in the battle of siblings. It was a special night as both teams wore special pink uniforms for cancer awareness and dedicated the match to a good friend of both Julie and Sherry who is battling the disease.
Spickard and Huddleston led LB with 16 kills each and Becca also had five blocks. Morris had 40 assists and 25 digs and Christina Ellis served up four aces for the Cavaliers.
A night later the Cavaliers played their third match in as many nights, hosting Staunton River in the regular season finale. Ironically, it was the third night they would play a team with the moniker “Eagles,” and the result was the same as LB soared higher than the visitors with a three set win, 25-11, 25-18 and 25-13. Rice had 12 kills, Spickard had 10 and Garcelynn Clark had seven as LB ended the regular season on a roll.
The Region 3D tournament is scheduled to begin Saturday with opponents to be determined this week. Quarterfinals are next Tuesday, November 1.