By TIM TAYLORTioga County Sports Report
CANDOR — Candor and S-VE came into Wednesday’s IAC Small School volleyball showdown with 5-0 records in division play. The outcome would determine the leader through the first half of the division schedule.
The host Coyotes would sweep the match, 3-0, building comfortable leads early in the first and third sets white coming from behind in game two. The score would end up 25-16, 25-22 and 25-7.
“That’s the best I've seen Candor, honestly, in a long time,” S-VE coach Charity Meyers said. “I thought they looked really good tonight, so hopefully they don't always look that good.
“The coaches are great. They definitely know what they're doing and stuff, but I think that Spencer had some shining moments.”
Candor coach Pam Quinlan was pleased with her team’s performance and felt that participating in the competitive Owego tournament was a plus.
“I felt like we had gone to the Owego tournament this past weekend and we played some of the STAC teams, and I just think that that helped us coming into today, just to be able to kind of raise our level of play, and to be a little more consistent with some things that we're doing,” Quinlan said.
“I think I just have some mentally tough kids and I think when you take two sets, and you can get a good lead in the third set and run with it, I think that's a mental edge,” Quinlan said. “We've talked a lot about how we struggled a little over the weekend with finishing some games, and we've talked about keeping that level up and not running up.”
Candor scored the first four points of the opening game and built an 11-1 cushion before the Panthers scored six straight points.
“That's one thing I told the girls after the first set is we can't give them so many points right up front,” Meyers said. “I had planned on changing a couple things, but we decided we were going to wait until after the Candor game. We didn't want to throw in some new stuff.”
The Coyotes would not lead by double digits again until scoring five consecutive points to grab a 24-13 advantage late in the set.
Candor scored the first two points of game two, but a pair of hitting errors helped S-VE tie the score. The Panthers would work three-point leads on four occasions, but the Coyotes eventually battled back to tie the score at 10, then grabbed the lead, but couldn’t pull away.
The Coyotes led, 18-14, at one point, but S-VE rallied to knot things up at 18. Candor would score the next four points then turn back a brief Panther surge to win the set.
That’s when the home team grabbed the momentum and it carried through to the end of the match.
“I guess any sport’s like that, but I know volleyball is just a sport of momentum that if you get it you can keep it,” Quinlan said. “You lose it, it's tough to get back and sometimes one thing goes your way or the other team's way, and it can just really turn the tide.”
“They did well and were coming back and I told them part of the whole game is really a mental game,” Meyers said. “You really have to push past all those struggling times and, I think that the first game, they were in it and working hard.”
Dropping the second game seemed to take the wind out of S-VE’s sails heading into game three.
“Absolutely,” Meyers said. “It does with all the kids, but that's part of the game is that you have to learn to get past and it's something that you always work on and stuff and sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.
“Hopefully we learned some more stuff from the game tonight and we can move on from there and hopefully grab it from them the next time.”
Candor dominated the majority of game three, scoring nine straight points early and didn’t allow S-VE to score consecutive points until the Coyotes had built a 19-5 cushion.
Phoebe Swartz recorded a double-double for the Coyotes, handing out 25 assists and scoring 15 points. She had five aces and one dig as well. Nicola Soper contributed 12 kills, eight points (2 aces) and six digs; and Grace Handy had six points (3 aces), four kills, two block assists and one assist.
Luci Ray added eight points (two aces), two kills, one block and one block assist; Kate Stouffer recorded seven kills and four digs; Emmi Makie had five kills, one block assist and one dig; Jill Teribury added four points (three aces) and one dig; Keanna Fay and Emma Kelsey tacked on one did each.
For S-VE, CC Churey scored eight points (1 ace), and had one kill and one dig; Faith Brenchley chipped in with six points (2 aces); Jackie Brown added an ace and five digs; Adriena Farmer had three points (2 aces), three kills and five digs; Makana Diboun pitched in with eight digs; Kaili Root had a kill and an assist; and Lauren Gillette tacked on a kill.
Candor hosts Groton Friday while S-VE heads to Newfield Tuesday.
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PHOTOS BY TIM TAYLOR.
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