Peters Township girls volleyball cruises to a sweep of Trinity
McMURRAY – The Peters Township girls volleyball team didn’t have the services of its Pitt recruit Alex Knox, but still looked like its dominant self on Thursday night.
The defending WPIAL champion Indians swept Trinity, 3-0, in a Class 5A Section 4 match at AHN Arena.
They won by set scores of 25-13, 25-8 and 25-23.
Knox did not play because of a sore shoulder.
“We’re just being careful with (the shoulder), so we didn’t play her tonight,” Peters Township coach Chris Kelly said.
Knox, a junior setter, trained with the U19 U.S. National Team over the summer.
In her absence, plenty of other players that returned from last year’s team that won the program’s first WPIAL title and state playoff game shined.
Maddie Carroll, Raia Lamping, Angelina Williams, Eva Drake and a host of others all made significant contributions in a fairly uneventful victory for the Indians.
“We probably have more depth this year than ever in my five years coaching Peters Township,” Kelly said. “Our other setter Liv Leehr is a senior and we had Avery Tatko, a sophomore out there tonight. Just to get (Tatko) a chance to play, and at a high level, is good for her. She’s out there with a lot of veteran players on the court.”
Peters Township cruised in the first set. The Indians never trailed and led by as many as 13, ending the set on a 9-3 run.
Lamping had four kills in the first set, Carroll and Williams added a pair of kills each and combined on a couple blocks.
“I feel like we have a lot of offensive weapons,” Kelly said. “We don’t have to rely on one girl to get all of our kills. We can spread the ball around. In practice we talked about running a fast offense and I thought we did a pretty good job of that tonight.”
The Indians continued to put the pedal down in the second set. They raced out to a 15-2 lead on kills from Carroll, Lamping and Williams and a couple service aces by Liv Leehr.
Annie Farmerie added back-to-back aces that made it 20-5, Lamping had two kills and multiple hitting errors by Trinity closed out the set.
“I thought we served really well and because we served so tough, they had a tough time running their offense,” Kelly said. “They weren’t passing the ball great and in turn we didn’t get their best and that’s because we kept them off balance with our serve.”
A kill by Ella Sammel gave Trinity a 3-2 lead in the third set, which was its first of the night.
Peters Township responded with a 12-3 run to take control. Mara Radulovich had a block, Charlie Tookey added a kill and Averie Tatko had consecutive aces, which made it 12-6.
The Indians held the lead from there and after holding off a late rally by the Hillers, closed out the match on a thundering kill by Carroll. Lamping had a kill from the right side that got the Indians to match point.
Trinity entered Thursday coming off a nice section win over Thomas Jefferson on Tuesday, but got an up close look at Peters Township’s strength.
Sammel had a good night for the Hillers. She finished with 11 kills and a block. Sammel is the defending WPIAL Class 3A girls high jump champion and was runner up in the state.