Despite 2-0 start, Morgan unhappy with early season play

By George L. Jones

The Selma Times-Journal

It wasn’t at all evident by the scores, but the Morgan volleyball team wasn’t up to the task Monday night.

It’s hard to believe a team would be unhappy after sweeping a match 25-21, 25-17, 25-12.

The Senators, however, said there were too many bugs in their win against Prattville Christian.

“I think we could have been better, and we will be better,” Jaye Lyn Lawrence said. “We definitely need to work on transition, serving and communicating. I would like to think we played as best as we could, and we definitely didn’t do that.”

Anne Woodruff was the offensive leader of the night, recording five kills and two aces. Lawrence had three kills and three aces, and Mary Peyton Zimmerman had three digs.

Amanda Golden put PCA up 5-0 to begin the first game, and then Morgan rebounded to take a 10-9 lead. After falling behind 16-13, Elizabeth Griffin put Morgan ahead 18-16 with four points on service and they didn’t trail again.

Summer Pugh and Erica Friday had consecutive service runs of six points, and Morgan went ahead 19-10 in game two.

The Panthers got as close as 19-14, but Morgan took back possession and put the game away.

The Senators had their biggest run of the night in the third game when Griffin provided 10 unanswered points from the line, putting Morgan in control 15-2.

A Zimmerman ace ended a four-point run and clinched the game and the match.

Morgan coach Carrie Nichols was happy that her team got off to a 2-0 start, but she also saw a lot of wrinkles that need to be ironed out.

Part of the problem, she said, was lack of practice time in between matches.

There also could have been some anxiety on the part of her players.

“Last year, they beat us two out of three games,” Nichols said. “All the returning varsity players knew how big a game this was. We beat a good team, we were just a little bit sketchy on a couple of things.

“You could tell we were out of practice. It was a sloppy game on both parts. No team was that much better than the other, and there were a lot of errors.”