AHS advances, Opp falls
Published 11:59 pm Monday, October 19, 2009
MOBILE — The Andalusia Lady Bulldogs defeated Montgomery Catholic 3-1 Saturday at UMS-Wright in the consolation round, finishing third at the Class 4A south regional tournament in Mobile.
The Lady Bulldogs started the day by sweeping Livingston 25-18, 25-10, 25-11 before falling to Class 4A foe St. James in their second match of the day.
Andalusia lost to the Lady Saints, 12-25, 21-25, 16-25, but bounced back to win against Montgomery Catholic, 12-25, 25-22, 25-18, 25-21 in the consolation match.
Andalusia coach Angie Grimes said her team had a “slow start” but came back and fought against St. James and Montgomery Catholic.
“Livingston played kind of different than we do,” Grimes said. “Once we got that behind us, we had to sit out for while before the St. James game.
“We really wanted to beat St. James,” she said. “I thought that we really could win that match. I just remember we started to play at the end of the match like we were supposed to at the beginning.”
In that match, Grimes said the team had to regroup after the 12-25 first game loss.
“The first game was awful,” Grimes said. “We came over to the sideline and discussed how awful it was. Then, the girls finally told themselves that they are not tired and let’s get out there and play and represent Andalusia High School. They came back out there and found some fight in them.”
Thursday, the Lady Bulldogs will travel to play at Jemison High School at 4 p.m., in a sub-state match.
Grimes said the focus at practice this week will be primarily on “transition.”
“We’re going to continue to work on our defense and transition,” she said. “We have some powerful hitters and they’re not used to the ball coming back over the net and we’ve got to be prepared for that. We have worked on it, but apparently, it’s not good enough.”
UMS-Wright 3, Opp 0
The Opp Lady Bobcats ended their season Saturday, losing to host school UMS-Wright 5-25, 9-25, 11-25.
Opp coach Christie Spurlin said her team still had a “good” season.
“(UMS-Wright) is a good team,” Spurlin said. “We’ll just have to wait next year and make sure to work hard and practice a whole lot better. Hopefully, next year will be a lot better. They played hard — I mean they played their best and that’s all I have asked them to do.”