LCA volleyball sweeps Grace Christian

Led by a dominating frontcourt, the LCA Bulldogs powered to a sweep of eight-time defending VIS Division III state champion Grace Christian, 25-19, 25-11, 25-16 to claim first place in the Blue Ridge Conference.

The Bulldogs (17-9, 9-0) faced their toughest test in the first game. Holly Johnson gave LCA an early 3-1 lead on a spike and would help to extend the lead from the service position. Though Johnson did not record an ace on her first trip to the service line, the Bulldogs would stretch their lead from 5-3 to 9-3 thanks in part to Johnson’s strong, accurate play at the line that often left the Warriors scrambling.

The first game lead stretched to eight but the Warriors did respond, closing to within 20-15 before the Bulldogs pulled away. Johnson ended the first match with an emphatic spike. Despite the Warriors track record, head coach Todd Lynn knew Grace would be a different team than the veteran one LCA faced a year ago.

“I knew that they lost (five) seniors from last year so I knew we would be coming in with more of an upper hand than last year. I knew they were going to be scrappy and real good fundamentally. I knew that it would come down to us playing our game,” Lynn said.

Warriors head coach Sue Leonard echoed Lynn.

“We only have really two players, two positions back, so we are rebuilding, there’s no doubt about that,” Leonard said. “Certainly we want to be scrappy, we want to hustle on defense. We are shorthanded … so we’re playing shorthanded just about every time we go out on court.”

The Bulldogs front line again overpowered a dogged Grace defense in the second game, blocking multiple Warriors returns and sending the ones that did get through back in a hurry. Johnson again led the way with assistance from Morgan Horne and Jen Garrett, Lynn’s other power player in the middle.

“(Holly Johnson) is definitely a big part of our offense, her and my other middle, they both play a big part in just keeping the offense balanced and with our passing just being able to get our setter to where she can spread the ball well,” Lynn said.

Bulldogs setter Arianna Avery had plenty of opportunities to spread the ball — and did, recording 25 assists along with one block.

The third game allowed Lynn the chance to tinker with some different rotations and gave some seldom used players a chance to play. The Warriors (8-7, 3-4) kept it close and led 9-8 at one point. However, the Bulldogs would string together 11 unanswered points to take an 18-9 lead before coasting to the 25-16 win.

Leonard knew that her team would need to turn in a flawless performance to run with the high-flying Bulldogs attack. Unfortunately for the Warriors, errors snuffed any chance they had for a major upset.

“We only have a few weapons we can use so we’ve got to do those things that we do well … consistently and we didn’t do that tonight,” Leonard said. “We made a lot of unforced mistakes that put us in the hole. They are a great offensive team.”