The Mountain Ridge Excessive Faculty brand. Aaron Morton
Anytime two rivals from the identical metropolis get collectively, you may count on an incredible sport.
Then add to the plot that the 2 foes are atop their area standings, each defending vital profitable steaks, and each ranked inside the highest three within the RPI.
“It’s all the time an excellent sport towards Herriman,” mentioned Mountain Ridge coach Bryan Nicholson.
For his Sentinels, it definitely was higher than simply good Tuesday evening as Mountain Ridge captured an emotional victory over Herriman 3-1.
Each groups entered the match with sky excessive confidence and their stellar play had been rewarded within the type of excessive RPI rankings. The second ranked Mustangs traveled throughout city to battle the third ranked Sentinels and the emotion within the gymnasium was current from the primary serve.
“It was fairly loud,” mentioned Mountain Ridge senior Eire McNees of the group. “I assumed that we saved our cool fairly good.”
It was Mountain Ridge who managed the primary set after each groups took a while to settle into the match. Main 15-8, the Sentinels appeared to have a solution for each Herriman run, pulling away for the 25-20 set victory.
The Mustangs discovered themselves in uncommon territory trailing by a set early within the match. Not solely was Herriman coming into the sport on an eight-match profitable streak, however seven of these eight victories had been in straight units. The group regrouped, battled by some early adversity, after which discovered a groove, which helped them take a 16-12 lead. The Mustang block performed a giant position in maintaining Mountain Ridge at bay and finally coming away with the 25-17 win.
“The second set, Herriman performed nice. They bought us off stability, saved us out of system, and served actually robust. We needed to modify to that a bit,” mentioned Nicholson.
From the primary level, it was clear that each groups desperately needed a 3rd set victory. Feelings had been working excessive and each level appeared to hold slightly bit of additional weight. Finally, the Sentinels started to achieve some momentum and took the 13-7 benefit, inflicting Herriman to make use of its second and last timeout of the set.
“We simply determined that we had been going to speak extra and run our system and never allow them to impression us,” mentioned McNees, who led Mountain Ridge on the evening with 14 kills.
Coach Nicholson agreed.
“Our passing bought higher. Our serve obtain stepped up and was capable of preserve us in system. It was a problem that I prolonged to the backrow gamers to step up our serve obtain sport and so they did.”
Herriman was not about to go down quietly although. The Mustangs rallied behind some stellar serving of their very own and tied the set at 17.
Would you count on something much less from these two rivals?
“My group is rarely out of it,” commented Nicholson. “We will take punches from individuals and get well, buckle down, and make performs. And that’s what they did tonight.”
Take punches and get well they definitely did, because the Sentinels regained the lead and momentum, and answered each massive level from Herriman with one in every of their very own, in the end taking the third set 25-22.
Within the fourth and last set of the evening, Mountain Ridge jumped out to an early 10-3 lead and by no means appeared again, ending the match with the 25-10 set triumph.
“That is one of the best group we’ve had at Mountain Ridge up to now,” mentioned McNees, whose 221 complete kills this season presently rank second in all of 6A. “I feel we've discovered that we are able to beat anybody if all of us simply play collectively. We're simply going to maintain taking it sport by sport till we get to the ultimate.”