Members of the 2016 Lady Toppers volleyball team gather around Head Coach Donna Dulle before Tuesday  night’s opening match with the Williamsville Lady Bullets.  The Lady Bullets defeated the Lady Toppers in two sets, winning 25-18 and 26-24 over the home team.  

Mount Pulaski falls to Williamsville in volleyball opener

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[August 31, 2016]  Mount Pulaski's Lady Toppers Volleyball Team opened the 2016 season hosting the Williamsville Lady Bullets. The Lady Bullets defeated the Lady Toppers in two sets, winning 25-18 and 26-24 over the home team.

Williamsville senior Delaney Edwards had an outstanding evening on the court as she dominated with 16 kills. Edwards made quite a statement with her first kill of the match, a direct hit that knocked Mount Pulaski sophomore Abigail Fitzpatrick off her feet.

After the contest, Edwards, who has already committed to play volleyball at Lincoln Land Community College next year, gave credit to her teammates. “We couldn’t do it without our passes and our sets, and they were good tonight, so it all just came together.”

When asked if 16 kills are a career high, the outside hitter responded, “Yeah, I think it’s up there close to it.”



Williamsville Head Coach Stacey Carlson was also very focused on the team effort and noted how hard the ladies work. "We prepare to work hard, we work hard in practice and we come out to work hard in matches. We are going to continue to get better with the things we know we are good at and we are going to work on the things that we know we are not very good at right now, so hopefully we are just going to get better from here,” said Carlson.

It is early in the season and with Carlson’s team off to a 2-0 start, the coach has already done a little switching things up and so far the changes are working well. “I did a little bit of switching last week (the Lady Bullets defeated St. Teresa to open their season) so we are still trying to get used to some of those roles.

"We’ve got some girls that have moved from hitting spots to other hitting spots that are wanting the ball to be fed to them a little bit more to get more swings. So we are going to continue to work on that, which is awesome, the hitters that want the ball,” said Carlson.

"Not being able to pinpoint her team down to any one strength or weakness, Carlson stated, "We kind of roll together as a team.”

A team that on Tuesday night fell quickly behind in game one to the Lady Toppers 6-2 before battling back to tie the score at 8-8. The Lady Bullets then went on a 7-0 run, topping the Lady Toppers 15-8 at this point.

Next, it was Mount Pulaski turning the tables and going on a 7-0 run, tying the game at 15-15 as Williamsville’s Bridget Rhodes hit the ball into the net. Rhodes redeemed herself with a kill on the next possession and the Lady Bullets took a 16-15 lead and never looked back.

Another kill by Rhodes gave Williamsville a 20-17 lead. The Lady Bullets did everything right while earning the final points of the set, all the way down to the last point scored on a service ace by Edwards. Williamsville won the first set by a score of 25-18.

The second set was much closer and way more intense as neither team was able to take a commanding lead and keep it. Mount Pulaski again jumped out to an early lead, 6-4 this time. The Lady Toppers even managed to stretch the lead to 13-8, but the Lady Bullets still had plenty of fight left in them.



A couple kills by Edwards would spark the Bullet offense and before long Williamsville was right back in it, only trailing 14-12.

Ashleigh McDermott would come up big with her first kill of the evening to pull the Lady Bullets to within one point, 17-16 now the Mount Pulaski lead. Williamsville then tied the score at 17-17, after a great effort by Mount Pulaski’s Alexandra Beckers to save the ball fell just short of the net.

The next volley for a point went back and forth for what seemed like an eternity and ended with Mount Pulaski getting called for being in the net and this would give Williamsville their first lead of the second set, 18-17. Rhodes extended the Lady Bullets lead 19-17 as her hit went off the two Mount Pulaski defenders and wound up out of bounds.

Mount Pulaski refused to give up or give in though, as Fitzpatrick slammed the ball between two Lady Bullets in the back row and then Sidney Craig hit the ball into the net for Williamsville and the game was once again tied, 19-19 the score.

The intensity level increased at this point with the two tough teams battling back and forth, literally point for point, from here until the score rested at 24-24.

Appropriately it was Edwards serving the last two points and as Mount Pulaski committed the final two errors of the set, Williamsville was able to claim the 26-24 victory and walk away with the win.

The Lady Bullets are off to a 2-0 start this season, while Mount Pulaski falls to 0-1 to start the season.

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Mount Pulaski Head Coach Donna Dulle offered these thoughts following the loss. “I thought we had a couple good swings. I think we need to be able to communicate more, we have to be better offensively, just lots of improvement and I think we need to just get to know each other better.

"You can tell they (Williamsville) are a senior laden team and they played well together, but we still had a chance to beat them,” said Dulle. "We just did some things that we should have done a little bit better. Some things we did well.

"I thought Morgan May did a great job at the net for us and Alexandra Beckers did a good job setting,” added Dulle. Beckers, a wicked lefty, was also called on to hit the ball. "We need to work on getting the ball better to her,” said Dulle of Beckers. “She’s got some pretty good swings.”

Dulle also noted the play of two other key starters. "Skylar Hayes and Abigail Fitzpatrick had a couple good swings early. They’ve got to bring more to the table for us right now,” Dulle said of the two sophomores who also saw time as varsity starters last season.

“Passing is good,” Dulle continued. “I think their weakness is probably where they are attacking the ball, like making better shots at hitting. Our middles probably need to work just harder in practice. Morgan May works her butt off all the time,” Dulle continued.

"I’ve been working Alex Clemons from outside to right side. We just couldn’t get the ball to the right side enough, I didn’t think tonight for some reason.

"We played smart sometimes and then we would let balls drop. We kinda broke down a little bit. So they’ve just got to be able to come back. That’s just part of being mature. Our players who were freshmen last year are stepping up and you can see they are a little more mature than they were last season. By the end of this season I want them to be seasoned.”

Finally Dulle noted it’s early in the season and things are just beginning to take shape. "It’s our first game and it’s really hard to tell where you’re at. You know you practice for three weeks against each other and against the junior varsity, and you just cannot tell.
Well, now we know there are some good hitters out there,” she said. "We have to learn to play better defense and learn to come back in transition and hit the ball at them.”

The Lady Toppers will be back in action Thursday night in Athens at 6:00 p.m.

Meanwhile, Williamsville will undoubtedly be a team to watch this season. The past two seasons the Lady Bullets traveled deep into post season volleyball action, falling two years ago in the sectional final and then falling just short of a state berth last season. Their exit in the super sectionals last year still stings and Coach Carlson admitted "that was a tough one.” "That gets brought up a lot,” Carlson said.

"I feel like the girls have a lot of pressure because as you can tell from the starting lineup, there are a lot of seniors. A lot of them were on that team last year and have played. A lot of those same seniors were sophomores and played on the team two years ago when we lost in the sectional final. I feel like we are just at a pressure moment right now. We really need to not play with pressure. We just need to play. We are a good team and we just need to play. So we are going to work through some of that, too. I mean it’s just a constant reoccurrence of we had a great team last year but we are not the same team. So we have to make this team just as good as last year’s team and we’re going to continue to do that because we are going to work hard in practice,” Coach Carlson said.

Williamsville will host Pleasant Plains Thursday night in volleyball. The Lady Bullets will also be returning to Mount Pulaski the weekend of September 16 and 17 to take part in the Fall Festival Tournament.

Meanwhile the Lady Bullets Junior Varsity downed the Lady Toppers Junior Varsity Tuesday night 18-25, 25-15 and 25-15 to improve to 2-0 on the season as well.

[Teena Lowery]

Mount Pulaski stats

Abigail Fitzpatrick 4 kills 8 digs
Alex Clemons
Alexandra Beckers 3 kills 5 digs
Morgan May 1 dig
Paige Stewart
Skylar Hayes 7 kills 10 digs
Kenzie Lock (libero) 2 digs
Isabella Wade 3 digs

Williamsville stats

Bridget Rhodes 4 kills
Caitlin Beaver
Ashleigh McDermott 1 kill
Ally Karras
Leah Musselman
Delaney Edwards 16 kills 9 digs
Maggie Sorenson (libero) 1 kill 6 digs
Sidney Craig 3 kills 2 digs
Laney Flynn 1 dig

Writer’s Note: It is a small world after all. After the match the Hayes and Edwards families were spotted visiting with each other, as childhood friends Steve Hayes and Rick Edwards, both graduates of MPHS (Class of ’84), had daughters facing off against each other on the court. Both are stellar athletes but on this particular night it was Edwards taking the spotlight with her 16 kills, 9 digs and countless service points, much to the delight of her proud grandparents, Rich and Marilyn Edwards of Mount Pulaski.

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