Colonels’ volleyball overcomes a two-game deficit

ALTAVISTA — Momentum swings are a major factor in the game of volleyball.

Nelson County won the first two games of its Dogwood District match at Altavista (25-23, 25-19) on Tuesday night only to have the Colonels roar back and sweep the last three games (25-22, 25-20, 15-8), securing a stranglehold on the regular-season district title.

“Volleyball is a game of momentum and you could certainly see that tonight,” Colonels coach Debra Spencer said. “We challenged our kids (after the second game). We challenged them to win the third game and not get swept in such an im-portant game on our own court. We challenged them to have a little more pride in themselves than that.”

William Campbell trails Altavista by one game in the district standings after splitting the season series with both the Colonels and the Governors. Altavista swept Nelson County.

So all the Colonels need to do is defeat Chatham in Altavista on Thursday to claim the regular-season title and automatic bid into the Region B tournament.

“We’ve got to do this one more time on Thursday,” Spencer said. “We’ve got to beat one more really good team.”

The match’s most obvious momentum swing came in the fifth game as Altavista (13-6, 10-1 Dogwood) buried Nelson County (14-5, 8-3) with a 12-0 run to start the final stanza.

“I think we started to panic and when we panicked we got way from what we were doing in games one and two,” Gover-nors coach Vicki Crawford said.

Sophomore outside hitter Ashley Wells led Nelson County’s attack with 18 kills, but most of those came in the first two games.

“The first two games, their hitters just out-hit us,” Spencer said. “We were able to get a couple of digs and make a few more plays defensively. What helped us, too, is that we were able to keep (Wells) on the back row by making some runs. The back row is a good place to keep her.”

Kristin Gibson paced Altavista with 15 kills, 12 digs, four aces and three blocks.

Crawford and the Governors are looking forward to a rematch with Altavista in next week’s district tournament.

“I told them it’s not that big of a deal,” she said. “We still have the (Dogwood) tournament to look forward to. We need to win the tournament or at least get to the championship game and we’ll settle it on the court from there.”