The Greeneville Lady Devils volleyball team got its first win of the season with a 25-13, 25-13, 25-15 district victory over Unicoi County on Thursday at Greeneville.
“I’m just really proud of the team,” Greeneville coach Sara Aiken said. “We set goals for all three sets and they met those. It was really good that they dug in and did what they needed to meet those goals. Everybody got to touch the ball and play the ball tonight.”
Aiken said Unicoi played scrappy, which forced Greeneville to slow starts in the first two sets. The first went back and forth with the Lady Devils eventually holding an 11-9 lead. After that, Greeneville pulled away with Destani Bailey hammering two kills to make it 19-13.
The Lady Devils went on a six-point run to claim the first set 25-13. During that stretch, Kyla Jobe had two kills, Emma Shelton and Emma Light each had one kill and Brynlee Jones served an ace.
Unicoi took a 4-1 lead in the second set, but Greeneville roared back to take an 11-5 lead. Manning Click served two straight aces and had a kill. Shelton and Jobe also hammered kills.
That long stretch of points helped carry Greeneville to its second win of the night, 23-15, with Natalie Knight earning the final point with a kill.
“The reason they could hit the ball tonight and attack so well was because they had great ball control behind them,” Aiken said. “When you get the ball up to the setter and they feel confident setting that middle, that’s a really hard place to defend so that sets them up for success.”
The third set had a wild streak of runs from both teams. Greeneville took an 8-1 lead before Unicoi rallied to take an 11-10 lead.
“I think we just had a little valley of errors,” Aiken said on the lull at the start of the third set. “I just remember thinking, ‘Wow, we need to turn this around.’”
Aiken put it on the Lady Devils to see if they could fix it and pull themselves out of the slump. That spurred an eight-point run with kills from Shelton and Leah Ford, and a block from Trudy Aiken for an 18-11 lead.
Greeneville held the lead the rest of the way, improving to 1-3 on the season.
“They just needed to improve and do the little things right,” Aiken said. “Fundamental volleyball. Be where you are supposed to be, follow the ball, talk – all those things.”
Jobe finished with 10 kills, eight digs and two aces; Trudi Aiken had 22 assists, four digs and two kills; Click had 16 digs and three aces; Jones had 13 assists and eight digs; Kinley McCaslin had seven digs and four kills; Bailey had six kills; Ford had five kills; and Knight had two kills.
“I’m very excited for the girls,” Sara Aiken said. “They’ve worked hard. They’ve made wins, not on the books, not in the record, but they made some really good wins in those three games that we played already. I could not be more excited for this team.”
Greeneville plays in the Sunsphere Tournament on Friday and Saturday in Knoxville.
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