COVINGTON – The Tri-Village Lady Patriots defeated the Fairlawn Lady Jets 3-1 in OHSAA DIV tournament play.
“This team matched up well against some of our strengths,” said Tri-Village coach Chris Brewer.
Tri-Village was looking at an opening set deficit before taking advantage of eight straight Shelby Minkenbaugh serve points to earn a 25-17 win to go up 1-0 over the Shelby County school.
“We have been able to rely on our serving a lot of matches,” Brewer noted. “That first game Shelby served eight in a row back there and that really helped the hole that we dug.”
Set No. 2 had the Lady Jets doubling the score on Tri-Village at 14-7 and 16-8 before the Lady Patriots used a 8-6 run to trail 20-15. Fairlawn closed out scoring with a 5-1 run to earn a 25-16 second set win and even the match at a game apiece.
“I told the girls its going to take heart to win some of these games,” Coach Brewer stated. “I don’t feel like we were our best today.There were some areas where we struggled a little bit.”
The third set of the night had Fairlawn leading 6-1 only to have the Lady Patriots battle back to knot the score at 20-20 and go on to win the game 25-22 sending the teams to a fourth set with the Lady Patriots holding a 2-1 advantage.
“We made up for it with the heart that we put into it,” said Bewer of the third set win. “They never quit, they always work hard and when you can come back from any deficit in a tournament game it says a lot.”
The Lady Patriots took a 6-3 lead to open fourth set play with the Lady Jets battling back to even the score. The team’s battled back and forth with ties at 11-11, 12-12, 13-13, 14-14, 15-15, 16-16 before Molly Schantland stepped to the serving line to give the Lady Patriots an 21-16 lead on the way to a 25-18 win and advance Tri-Village in tournament play.
“Molly was able to get them a little bit out of system at the end of the fourth set serving,” said Coach Brewer. “They made a couple substitutions to try to help out but She stuck right in there, stayed with her game plan. We wanted to target that back corner and she did a good job.”
