Andes Central rebounds with win over Raiders

Andes Central got off to a slow start in a consolation match of the Class B state volleyball tournament against Lyman.

The Eagles dropped the first set but bounced back to defeat the Raiders 3-1 by set scores of 22-25, 25-13, 25-23, 25-14 Friday at the Corn Palace in Mitchell.

“That’s one thing we have done all year is get down early and come back,” said Andes Central head coach Rocky Brinkman, whose team fell behind early Thursday and ended up on the wrong side of the win-loss column. “We managed to do it again (Friday). We didn’t do anything different in our first set that we didn’t do in sets three, four and five.”

Lyman came out focused and composed and won its first set of the tournament after losing in straight sets to Parker Thursday. The Raiders’ offense, led by Anna Flitner’s 13 kills, paved the way to a 25-22 set victory.

“It was exciting and pretty awesome to win our first set, and we had a total turnaround from (Thursday),” Lyman co-head coach Jill Whalen said. “It was great to see our girls go out and play their game and see our hitting, blocking and serving be where it needed to be.”

Flitner and the Raiders couldn’t maintain that energy and momentum and were beaten in the second set 25-13 after the Andes Central front row came alive, led by middle hitters Krista and Kellie Winckler, who recorded 17 and 15 kills, respectively.

“There wasn’t a bad performance out of anyone of our five hitters,” Brinkman said. “Teams always key on our middle girl and we knew that going out there.”

Lyman had a glimmer of hope in the third set when both teams were knotted at 22. But unforced service errors plagued the Raiders, and they dropped the third set by two points.

“I think that we were trying to play safe,” Whalen said. “We’re an aggressive team. We like to play aggressively, and if we don’t do that then we make errors.”

After the third-set loss, the Andes Central defense began to take over the game, led by Sierra Svatos, who finished the game with a game-high 25 digs.

“We knew we had to play good defense, because they were going to go all out because they wanted this win just as bad as we did,” said Krista Winckler, who did her part on the defensive end with 16 digs.

Lyman’s Sara Herman added 17 digs, Bailey Almond had 10 digs and 13 assists and Brooklyn Halverson added five kills.

Andes Central takes on Herreid/Selby area at 1:45 p.m today. in the fifth-place match, while Lyman will look to earn its first tournament win against Timber Lake at noon for seventh place.

Tags: sports, updates, andes, central, lyman