It is said that small hinges swing big doors.
The West Prairie High School volleyball team notched its fifth straight victory Thursday evening, downing host South Fulton 25-14, 25-15 in a Prairieland Conference South Division contest at Astoria High School.
The Cyclones improved to 7-8 overall, 1-1 in Prairieland play, while South Fulton dropped to 1-4 overall, 0-2 in league play.
The previous week at the Lady Suns Classic at Augusta, West Prairie coach Drew Snyder saw his team squander a 22-14 set one lead on the way to not only dropping the set 27-25, but the match as well.
That left the Cyclones with a 2-8 record. “When you have that kind of lead, you have to win the set,” said Snyder.
The next day, the team watched the video of the match. “We nit-picked a lot of the little details of the things that we were not doing consistently,” said Snyder. “Small things that add up to big things.”
“We’ve really focused a lot in our practices and in our games right now on more discipline,” he added. “Fixing the small things so that way the team overall improves.”
“It’s starting to show up in our game play,” Snyder said. “It’s been a whole team effort.”
Leading 6-4 in the opening set, the Cyclones put together a four-point run that included kills by Madelynn Sullivan and Alexa Barclay.
A South Fulton passing error followed, giving West Prairie a 10-4 advantage. And the visitors maintained control of the remainder of the set.
“We’re a super-young team,” said South Fulton coach Erin Posey. “We have one returning senior. We have lots of sophomores playing up and playing varsity.”
“They’re learning,” she added. “They’re really good at their own age level, but it’s hard to play against competition that’s two years older than you.”
In addition to the youth, the Rebels were forced to play Thursday’s match without starting middle Shelby Heller, who suffered a concussion in the team’s match two days earlier against North Fulton. That forced Posey to shuffle the lineup in an effort to compensate for Heller's absence.
Set two saw West Prairie maintain a four-point lead until three consecutive kills by Barclay gave the Cyclones a 19-12 advantage on the way to completing the sweep.
Alexa Barkley led a balanced West Prairie attack with seven kills, followed by Madelynn Sulivan and Niah Zimmerman with six kills each. Alyvia Barkley chipped in four kills for the victors.
Sullivan also recorded 19 assists, 10 digs and 2.5 blocks “She took advantage of every hole we had,” said Posey of Sullivan.
Macy Branch had nine service points, including two service aces, along with five digs for West Prairie.
Abby Starbuck added six digs, while Niah Zimmerman and Alyvia Barkley had five digs each.
“They do a good job,” said Posey of West Prairie. “They’re quick. They move to the ball. They’re always communicating.”
“That program has always been consistently good,” she added.
“We’re very seasoned right now, maybe compared to a lot of other teams,” said Snyder. “I would expect as (the other teams) get more game competition, they’re going to catch up.”
“But we’re going to work hard to improve and I think that we’re on the path to achieving some of our goals,” he added.
For Posey and her young squad, the work will continue. “They work hard and they do everything they can,” she said.
“They’re playing better than they’ve played in a long time,” said Posey of her squad. “They’re working together.”
“We’ll work on it and we’ll figure it out,” she continued. “I’m confident that we’ll look better at the end of the season than we have in the beginning.”
The JV match saw South Fulton defeat West Prairie 25-21, 15-25, 25-15.
The Cyclones played at Peoria Heights Monday and will head to Cuba to face North Fulton on Wednesday.
