The Lakeland Hawks volleyball team (8-3, 2-1) swept the Lewiston Bengals in three sets on Sep. 12. The scores were 25-18, 25-22, and 25-10.
The student section theme was USA. Students wore their best patriotic outfits, including cowboy hats, sunglasses and American flags.
The strong side did amazing at blocking powerful hits from Lewiston. Sophomores Chloe Neff and Alyssa Ryckman each played, making them the youngest girls on the court against Lewiston. Strong plays from both teams were delivered, but Lakeland was able to overcome their opponent.
Ryckman had 11 kills and eight digs for the Hawks, and Ziya Munyer added nine kills and eight blocks.
All the girls on the team proved that they were excited to be on varsity. They gave it their all during practice and even stayed late after practice to improve their weak spots. This paid off during Tuesday night’s win.
While watching the game, it is evident that every girl on the team is very engaged and locked into each second of the game. Managing to make many highlight plays and jaw-dropping spikes, it is clear that everyone on the team deserves to be there.
During the final set, you could feel the tension rise as the players went onto the court, and the coaches prayed they remembered everything from practice.
The Hawk’s next game is at LHS against the Post Falls Trojans on Sep. 16 at 1:30 p.m.
Once again, the Lakeland Hawk’s (8-4, 2-2) volleyball team battled until the end on either side of the net. With all three sets being very close and the final set only being differentiated by one point, Coeur d’Alene (11-2,2-1) and Lakeland were quite the match-up for the game on Sep. 14. Ultimately, the Vikings prevailed 25-21, 25-22, 29-27 and completed the sweep of the Hawks.
The LHS volleyball team played their hearts out until the final point. Not only did the attack zone work hard to block and hit, but the defense zone also had to keep on its toes to keep up with CHS’ serves and hits. Lakeland was forced to play their most powerful players for each position all night because of the extremely close score.
Smart and carefully picked plays and timeouts were frequent. During the third set, Coeur d’Alene called a timeout while Lakeland was on a three-point streak. Fans speculated that this timeout was in hopes of having some of Lakeland’s momentum wear off during the one-minute break.
“I think we just need to lock in faster,” Hawks junior Ashleigh Feld said.
Ashleigh had many notable plays against the Vikings, such as perfect hits and blocks in the front, along with junior Layla Benson and senior Lila Keifer.
LHS delivered beautiful serves, with a couple of aces slipping past CHS giving LHS an easy point. Some rallies lasted extremely long, with both teams keeping up with each other’s tactics extremely well.
Sophomore Alyssa Ryckman, junior Addyson Hocking, and many other girls kept the ball up no matter how impossible it may have seemed to get to it before it hit the ground. With everyone cheering each other on and keeping their game faces on throughout the whole game, the scoreboard always showed very close numbers.
Ryckman had 11 kills and 15 digs for the Hawks, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the Vikings.
The student section was loud and neon. With such a close game, everyone was engaged and excited. It is safe to say that Lakeland students brought their spirit and were ready to back the girls on the court, no matter the score.
Considering that CHS is a 5A school, LHS is quite impressed with the game that the girls played.
