St. Augustine- Fletcher is defending its 2018-2019 Gateway Conference Championship and they are keeping the ball rolling this season. The Fletcher Lady Senators were able to travel down to St. Augustine to and make quick work of the Lady Jackets in straight sets.
Fletcher won the coin toss and served first and came out on a run. Few things went wrong for the Lady Senators in the opening minutes, the only points that the Lady Jackets received were off Fletcher mistakes. St Augustine looked to be in over their heads which made Coach Kara Lanteigne call a quick timeout. The Senators led 12-4 before the timeout.
After the timeout, the Lady Jackets came out more poised and ready to make a run. After some long rallies and errors on their end, St Augustine was able to make a small comeback, but kills by sophomore middle hitter Sidney Gaudreault, followed by senior middle hitter Madison Scott, all but cemented the set for the Lady Senators. Fletcher was able to take the first set 25-14.
St Augustine served first in the second set but started off with a service error. The impressive big duo of Fletcher was the front row of Scott and sophomore outside hitter Alexandra Hennessey. When those two were at the net, they altered many Lady Jacket hits with their length and size.
The second set looked like the first set after a Lady Jacket timeout. St Augustine was able to net three straight points making the score 17-10. The last points were dominated by Fletcher hard swings of junior outside hitter Bella Phillips, Scott and Hennessey. The Lady Senators took the second set 25-12.
The third set started off close, the Lady Jackets seemed to have worked out some of the kinks and narrowed the Lady Senators lead early to one point. The Lady Jackets serve receive proved a problem in this set, they were able to get under the ball but never hitting their marks which caused for long hits instead of them being at the net.
After two points with the ball dropping just in front of the players, Lanteigne called a timeout looking to settle her team. Down 10-4, early in the decisive set St Augustine tried to fight back, even mounting a small comeback later in the set. They eventually couldn’t get past the talented front line of Fletcher.
Fletcher was led in kills by Gaudreault with 8 kills which was the high of the game, Hennessey and Phillips each netted 7 kills. Mulalic led the game with 26 assists. Scott led the game with 4 blocks. McBride also led the game in digs with 22, followed behind by her teammate Mulalic with 18. Saint Augustine was led by Madden with 4 kills, Messler with 12 assists and Burchfield with 11 digs.
Both teams travel on Tuesday night, Saint Augustine (2-3) travels to Seabreeze and Fletcher (5-1) to Stanton.
