A sweet start

Lady Raiders, Mounties advance to semifinal round

Ron Bracken

- For the CDT

PHILIPSBURG — It was ice cream cones all around for the Bellefonte girls' volleyball team and a piece of cake for Philipsburg- Osceola in District 6 Class AA volleyball quarterfinals here on Tuesday night.

Craig Houtz

Bellefonte's Jena Matter (8) spikes the ball against Huntingdon's Alix Sellers (13) and Torrie Garner (17) during their District 6 AA quarterfinal on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2009.

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The Lady Raiders, who are the third seed in the district, rallied for a 3-2 victory over Huntingdon, coming back from a 2-0 deficit to trim the sixth-seeded Lady Bearcats.

Meanwhile, the top-seeded Lady Mounties rolled over No. 9 Richland in three sets as they improved to 19-0.

“Going into the third game I challenged the kids not to error themselves out,” said Lady Raider head coach Chad Weight. “I told them if they did that I’d buy them ice cream cones.”

At the same time, the Lady Mounties took care of business the way you’d expect the top-seeded team to do it, grabbing a 7-0 lead in Game 1 and never looking back.

“Richland had the first serve and Kelsey (Gonder) set it for Taylor (Harpster) and she killed it,” said P-O assistant coach Dave Eckberg. “Taylor hits the ball as hard as any volleyball player I’ve seen except for (former Penn State standout) Christa Harmotto.”

The Lady Mounties put together runs of seven, five and four points on their way to winning the first game 25-9.

But Richland gave them an elbow to the midsection in the second game, taking a 5-2 lead before P-O snapped out of its funk and went on a five-point run to take the lead for good. The Lady Mounties finished out the game with nine points while Harpster was serving to win 25-14.

“At the beginning of the second game they had us back on our heels a little bit,’’ Eckberg said. “They started to get a little run on us. We called a timeout and refocused. We regained the momentum about halfway through the second game and we kept it.”

Game three saw the Lady Mounties again scoring points in clusters as they had rallies of four, five and six points to put the game and the match away 25-12.

Harpster finished the night with 12 kills, seven blocks and six service points including six aces.

“Taylor was sharp tonight. She played her typical game,” Eckberg added. “And Kelsey, it’s hard to find mistakes with her. She set the tempo.

“We came out pretty intense and set the tone in the first game. We had a little letdown in the second game, we didn’t really play great defense. But we made some adjustments and finished strong. We had 16 aces and only seven errors. We wanted the girls to be more aggressive. It’s a high risk, high reward thing.

“We told them we didn’t want them to be fearful of making mistakes. We wanted to put the pressure on the other side of the court. We tried to instill in them that they’ll have a target on their backs for as long as this thing (playoffs) goes.”

It could go to a point where they’ll be facing the Lady Raiders in a rematch in Saturday’s finals if both survive their Thursday night matches.

For a while it looked as though Bellefonte would be on the sidelines by then as Huntingdon got out to a 2-0 lead. But midway through the second game the Lady Raiders began to build momentum in a 26-24 loss. Bellefonte stormed back to win by the same score in game three and took the fourth game 25-23 to force a fifth game, which they won 15-9.

They won by getting off to an 8-3 start and then closing strong on the serving of Jerrica Harvey and Jena Matter, who finished the game with a kill.

“This isn’t the first time it’s been close with them,” Weight said of the rematch with Huntingdon. “When we played them over there, they were up 2-0. But our kids are resilient, they knew they could do it. Things might not have looked pretty but I have to give these kids credit, they have a lot of heart.”

Kaity Clouser led the Lady Raiders in kills with 26 and Matter added 15 to set up their teammates with ice cream once they rose to Weight’s challenge.

“One of the things we got ourselves into was that we were erroring ourselves out,” Weight said. “We were serving ourselves out, we were giving points to them.

“We knew Huntingdon was very good. They’re a well-coached team and these games can go either way. Tonight we found a way to win.”

Harvey had 13 digs for the Lady Raiders and Emily Putnam had 47 assists.