As they have done for the past two seasons, the Atlee girls volleyball team rolled through another Capital District regular season, capping things with a 3-0 sweep of Hanover on Wednesday night to repeat as district tournament champions. The victory moves the Raiders streak over district opponents to 49 straight matches without losing a single set.

  Regardless of the fact that it was a contest for the Capital District tournament title, the Raiders went about their work at Glen Allen High School as if it was just another day at the office. There were few cheers from the players following each of the three set victories. The most emotional display of the night came with the trophy presentation but head coach Curtis Carpenter would like to see more of that enthusiasm during games.

  “It’s definitely been something that we’ve been trying to work on,” he said. “I’ve been giving them a hard time about lack of intensity. I know there’s going to be certain teams that we’re going to get pushed by as we go along. We saw some of those teams in the beginning of the season. So my preaching to them is they’ve got to bring it themselves.”

  Carpenter believes part of the problem may be a result of being so good. “We create such a quick offense that right off the bat we keep people out of their system,” he said. “Because of that reason, I don’t think we seen some of the best that these other teams can play because we’ve kept them so out of system. Me saying, ‘You all have got to get fired up’ and they’re beating somebody by 10-12 points, that’s hard to do.”

  Atlee ran out to a 10-4 lead in game one before mental lapses allowed Hanover back into the contest. Three shots into the net, one out of bounds and a double hit by Atlee pulled the Hawks within one, 10-9.

  But when they need it most, the Raiders have the talent to go on huge runs and so they did, outscoring Hanover 15-2; closing out the set on a pair of Haley Brooks aces and a kill from Karlie Suber for a 25-11 win.

  The Raiders never let Hanover contest the second set, racing ahead 9-3 which stretched to 13-4 on an ace from Suber before going on to a 25-10 win.

  Atlee was extremely aggressive from the service line. So much so that four of Hanover’s 10 points came on Raider service errors.

  In fact, the Raiders have stepped up their already aggressive nature even more down the stretch.

  “We want to be aggressive and we’re going to come at you aggressive,” Carpenter said. “The end of our season we’ve actually been working on being more aggressive at the serve. I’ve got kids that are jump serving now that haven’t been jump serving except for the last two weeks.”

  Carpenter is doing everything he can to prepare his squad to a return to the state championship tournament.

  “We want to come at you hard,” he said. “That’s one way we’re going to keep you out of system. If you can pass us, then we’ll play some defense against you. I want us to be hard with our serving.”

  For Hanover, simply getting a return on Atlee’s service was a challenge. “Atlee served phenomenal,” said head coach Karl Lippa. “I mean Atlee served extremely well and that got us a little rattled, so it was hard to do block coverage as much.”

  Atlee led 20-10 in the third set before Hanover went on a brief three point run. The Raiders then closed out the match 25-14.

  Where Atlee lacked emotion, Hanover was simply drained of it after a hard fought 3-2 upset victory of #2 seed Lee-Davis in the semifinals the night before; 25-21, 25-22, 23-25, 19-25, 15-11.

  The Hawks had struggled through a difficult 13-9 regular season being swept by both Atlee and Lee-Davis. So just reaching the district championship and earning a regional berth took all of the emotion they possessed.

  “One of my favorite quotes is ‘The journey is the reward’ and getting here to the finals was the reward,” Lippa said. “Lee-Davis, hats off to them, oh my God, that was such a match and we knew coming into this the emotional energy we had to put in to get here was something we had to do.”

  While Hanover achieved their goal of reaching regionals, Atlee’s still lies ahead.

  “We want to be undefeated in November,” Carpenter said. “That’s our goals. We still have work to do.”
 
Atlee…................................ 25 25 25
Hanover….......................... 11 10 14
Highlights: Mallory Moore (H) 9 assists; Halee Winston (H) 2 kills; Clarke Power (A) 7 kills
Records: Atlee 25-3; Hanover 14-10

Hanover…................. 25 25 23 19 15
Lee-Davis….............. 21 22 25 25 11
Highlights: Mallory Moore (H) 3 kills, 10 digs, 37 assists; Shawna Kirby 21 digs; Halee Winston (H) 9 kills, 3 digs; Lindsey Neal (L) 5 aces, 18 digs; Jordan Martin (L) 17 assists; Logan Bryan (L) 6 kills, 9 digs
Records: Hanover 14-9; Lee-Davis 17-3