Scotland volleyball swept by West Brunswick in season opener

LAURINBURG — For any team, the first match of the season is always an exciting time for players and coaches. When the result of that match is a sweep though, it can be hard to enjoy it.

For the Scotland volleyball team (0-1), that said thing occurred against the West Brunswick Trojans (1-0) Tuesday night in their season opener when they fell 3-0.

“Things just didn’t fall our way today,” Scotland head coach Adam Romaine said. “We’ve got a couple of girls playing positions they’ve never played before, not to use that as an excuse. But I’ve told the girls last two days, we’re going to learn and live from this game, and then we’re going to come back to the table tomorrow at practice. But I’m proud of the girls. I mean, I think they played great; we really didn’t play bad. We just had some mental breakdowns at the wrong time and it forced some runs that we just couldn’t recover from.”

Although his team couldn’t come away with the win, Romaine thought his girls were good in some areas, including passing.

“Overall, I felt like we passed well, dug some good balls out also,” Romaine said. “We can be better because…there’s some second and third balls that came over that we should have got a better pass to our setter.”

Vice versa, Romaine felt his team has a lot to improve on.

“We’re going to have to play better defense, Romaine said. “That’s going to have to be our stronghold. Our coverage lapsed a lot of times. We had open blocks quite a few times. I had a couple of girls up front that weren’t blocking when they should have been blocking, weren’t making a move over. I don’t know if it was fatigue or what. Those things, we’re going to have to work on again in practice.”

The Lady Scots opened the first set with a 6-0 lead, but the Trojans closed in to only trail 7-6. Scotland outscored West Brunswick 9-4 to lead 16-10 before the Trojans rallied back to even the score at 20-20. After West Brunswick led 23-20, Scotland made it 23-23, and the score remained tied at 25-25.

Despite a back-and-forth battle, West Brunswick took the set 29-27.

“We kind of were in cruise control a little bit there,” Romaine said. “Had a bad little run there to give them some more life. But then it was mental mistake after mental mistake, and even a couple of times when we were up 27-26 on the serve.”

The errors continued into the second set for Scotland when they were down 15-4. But after West Brunswick led 20-9, Scotland went on a 9-1 run to make it 21-18. However, the momentum diminished shortly afterward, as the Trojans won the second set 25-22.

In the third set, the Lady Scots went down 10-2 but came back to tighten the score to 13-10. Near the end of the set, Scotland only trailed 22-20, but West Brunswick closed it with a 25-21 win.

Addison Johnson had 18 kills, five digs, and three aces for Scotland; Reagan Malpass had eight assists and four kills. Madison Dixon had nine assists, two digs, and an ace.

Tuesday’s match was a first for Romaine as he coached against his former player Emma Gray Beacham, the head coach for West Brunswick and a Scotland High School alumnus.

Romaine said he’s proud of the coach Beacham is becoming.

“It just makes me feel great that she’s doing such a good job because, not that I take any credit for it, but I just knew as a young lady coming through the system and watching her play the game, that she was a leader on the floor when she was here,” Romaine said. “She was a leader for me in middle school, which was dynamic at that age. And then she did great in college. I think you couldn’t ask for a better girl to be able to take a program over and be a coach. She was telling me (about) some of the early coaching issues she’s having. I said, ‘Hey, get used to it.’ But it was fun coaching against her. Of course, I’d rather the outcome be different. But I’m enjoying it. I’ll get a chance to get (back) at her when I about go back to her in October.”

Scotland hosts Lumberton in their next nonconference match on Monday.