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Women's Volleyball Turns Defense into Offense

Women's Volleyball Turns Defense into Offense

By Bryant Marks
DOBSON, NC -- The Richard Bland Women's Volleyball team showed that hard work pays off Saturday by winning both their matches against Pitt Community College and Surry Community College.

RBC is now 11-8 on the season.  They will play the next five games away from Statesmen Hall in a testing stretch of road games.  The team will travel to South Carolina on Tuesday, October 8, to match up against USC Salkehatchie at 5:30 pm.  Immediately after returning home, the Statesmen will ride I-95 up to New York City for four matches hosted at Monroe College in the Bronx.  Those matches will be played on Friday, October 11, and Saturday, October 12.

The first match of the day put the Statesmen women up against Pitt for the third time this year.  The teams have split their matchups and would look to break the tie Saturday.  Hard work at practice seemed to have paid off for the Statesmen in preparation for the match, as their defense shined in a convincing performance.  An area that the team has struggled with at times seemed to all come together on Saturday.  They set a new season record for team digs with 70 digs, which almost doubles the previous record.  Captain Ayanna Swan led the team in both kills and digs on the match with 13 kills and 24 digs.  In her first game starting at libero, Sydni Presson put together an impressive 17 digs and 2 assists to further bolster the defense. Also breaking her own season record for assists, Anna Ney gave the team 46 assists and 5 digs to power the Statesmen offense after the defense did its job.

After an impressive first showing for the Statesmen, Surry CC was up next.  Surry had also defeated Pitt earlier in the day.  RBC would show their opponents that their conditioning was well-trained after an energetic first match.  They controlled the momentum of the first set and won 25-10.  The Statesmen would keep fighting onwards to win both the second and third set in a similar fashion they have done all season in victories, with their offense.

For the Statesmen in the second match, Ayanna Swan had 20 kills, 3 blocks, and 2 aces, Sydni Presson had 15 digs and 1 kill, and Anna Ney had 31 assists and 5 digs.