Volleyball: Fayetteville Completes Sweep Of Springdale Har-Ber

FAYETTEVILLE -- Fayetteville had showed signs of putting together an all-around effort in all phases through its first 10 volleyball matches of the season.

The Lady Bulldogs finally found the complete performance Thursday and Springdale Har-Ber could do little to slow down the one-sided match in Fayetteville's 25-20, 25-15, 25-14 win at Bulldog Arena.

"I definitely think that was a big step in the maturity of this group," Fayetteville coach Jessica Phelan said. "We really did play a complete match from start to finish. We didn't make a lot of unforced errors and we had been kind of struggling with that.

"We were back at home, they were fired up and they were able to maintain that intensity throughout the whole match and I'm really proud with how they played tonight."

Springdale Har-Ber (4-2, 1-2 7A-West) went back and forth went the Lady'Dogs for a good portion of the first set. But after a brief 7-6 Lady Wildcats lead on a return error by Fayetteville, eight of the next 10 points went the Lady'Dogs way to help Fayetteville pull away in the first set.

Fayetteville (7-4, 3-0) would again trail briefly in the second set and faced a 12-11 deficit before a 7-0 run -- which included four kills by freshman Haley Warner -- led to a 2-0 lead in the match.

"(Fayetteville is) a very good team and they played very consistent tonight," Har-Ber coach Shyrah Schisler said. "Not only offensively, but they also played great defense tonight.

"They definitely played harder than us and controlled the game the entire night, and that was frustrating. I wanted to see more fight out of my kids."

Just like the first two sets, Har-Ber managed to keep things close out in the third set. But Fayetteville took control as the game wore on, turning a 8-8 tie at one point into a 15-8 lead as sophomore Faith Waitsman displayed solid play at the net.

"We had a great match at the net, Waitsman really controlled the net, and we played really good defense," Phelan said. "Hopefully it all came together and it will stay together going into the conference games we have coming up."

Warner finished with 19 kills for Fayetteville and Waitsman had five blocks. Ella May Powell added 32 assists and Abbie Kathol contributed eight kills and two aces. The Lady Wildcats got nine digs from Emily Doss, seven kills from Kim Huff and nine assists by Tiffany Ray.

Both teams are back in action Saturday at Fayetteville's tournament, the Tri-State Challenge.

Sports on 09/12/2014

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