FLAGLER

Lady Bulldogs win one, lose one in court action

Andy Mikula, Correspondent
Tina Grundner attacks the net in warm ups for FPC. [News-Tribune/Andy Mikula]

Flagler Palm Coast’s volleyball fortunes have taken a decided turn for the better in the young 2018 season evidenced by a win last week over Atlantic and a 4-3 record through matches played so far.

But there are still some hills to climb and one of those is the powerful New Smyrna Beach program. The two-time regional state finalists came to Palm Coast last Wednesday and meant business in a 3-0 victory over the Lady Bulldogs.

FPC, under new head coach Trent Schake, have shown a lot of improvement over a team that won just one match in 2017. It’s partly because of a blend of players experienced in the school of hard knocks and a number of talented sophomores and freshmen reinvigorating the program.

The Lady Bulldogs topped Atlantic Sept. 11 by a 3-1 count at FPC’s E.W. Andy Anderson Athletic Center. The squad won the first two games by scores of 25-23 and 25-21, fell off by a 19-25 score in the third game, and finished 25-14 in the clinching game.

FPC’s servers recorded 14 aces, including eight by sophomore Faythe Taugher, two by junior Mariah Siebert. As a team, FPC served better than 88 percent with only 11 errors in 95 attempts. Siebert kept things rolling with a team leading 17 assists and the squad had 22 kills, led by junior Rotary foreign exchange student Tina Grundner, who had eight.

Grundner, from Vienna, Austria, also had an ace, a block and two digs in the back row on defense. Shelby Beck had four kills in her first match back from an injury two weeks ago and three players, Taugher, Tori Chiang and Val Chum, all had three kills each.

Defensively, the team registered 10 point scoring blocks with Ele Barnaby having five of those and Adesuwa Salami adding three more. Senior libero Jasmin Myer had three digs to add to the team total of 11. The biggest factor was as a team, FPC limited its errors to 22 in 125 ball handling attempts and 18 of those in service receiving chances.

But it was errors of the unforced variety that killed the Lady Bulldogs in the New Smyrna match the next night. The FPC team held its own for much of the first game in a 25-18 loss — they were as close as 21-17 at one point — but could not find a way to break the powerful Barracudas' attack and games two and three, lost by identical 25-9 scores.

Lady Pirates drop 2 

The Matanzas Lady Pirates had a tough week with a 3-0 home loss Sept. 11 to district rival Pedro Menendez and a 3-0 loss on the road Sept. 12 to Mainland.

The Menendez loss was the second of the season to the Falcons, who won by scores of 25-22, 25-7 and 25-17. Senior Allysia Paiz led the team with six kills and 11 digs and as a team, the Lady Pirates recorded 39 digs. Matanzas served well at 93.8 percent (only three errors) but the Falcons kept volleys going to get side out and dominatd the attack. Matanzas’s Kate Thoubborn led the team with 11 assists, but for the most part Matanzas had difficulty on defense game.

Mainland won the Sept. 12 match 25-21, 25-14 and 25-17. Matanzas’s statistical leader in the match was sophomore Brianna Whitfield, who led in kills (13), blocks (10) and digs (11). Matanzsa played well at the net with 17 blocks and six blocking errors and recorded 47 digs with eight errors in the back. Thoubboron led with15 assists and had four blocks, Madison Fallon recorded seven blocks and Savannah Evans racked up eight digs.