WILLIAMSTON — The juggernaut known as the Riverside volleyball team continued to blast past opponents as the Knights topped Four Rivers Conference foe Manteo 25-17, 25-15, 25-13 on Tuesday.
The win extends Riverside’s winning streak to 14 and improves its record to 14-0 (8-0) as it heads into its battle with Camden on Thursday.
The Knights had got a great team effort on Tuesday and where led by Alexis Ange who racked up 20 service points and six digs.
Also filling up the state sheet was Madison Brandon and Rachel Baker, who had six kills each, while Rhonda Manning led the team in digs with nine. Jesse Ann Rogers, Peri Ange, Emily Griffin and Shaniro Cacerers also made major contributions.
“I thought everybody played well,” said Riverside coach Herbie Rogers. “We always talk about coming out and playing good early and I thought all the girls came out and played well.”
The Knights jumped out to take the first match 25-17. In the second match, the team fell behind 8-10 to the Redskins (8-6,4-4), but ripped off an incredible 16-2 run. Ange served for 14 of those points, and in that stretch she was downright unhittable.
“When you play a team you really have to serve to certain spots to keep them out of their offense and I thought we did a really good job of that,” Rogers said. “In the second game Alexis came to the line and just kept hitting her spot every time.”
While Ange’s serves were extremely accurate, they also lacked spin, which gave the Manteo players fits.
“She has a little float and a little bit of a knuckle-ball action on her serves,” Rogers said. “She was just really consistent.”
The Riverside passing was also very consistent as the team did a good job setting up Brandon, Baker and Paxton Copeland at the net.
“I thought we did a good job passing,” Rogers said. “Our backline really passed the ball well, and when they do that it gives us a chance to get into our offense.”
Riverside continued to roll in the third match as it a 10-5 run to the score from 13-5 run took the score from 6-5 to 19-10.
Overall, Rogers was pleased but said he would still like to see some improvement on defense.
“There are some things we need to work on defensively,” Rogers said. “We need to do a better job blocking up front, and that will help the backline so that they don’t have to dig as much.”
One thing Rogers was proud of was the fact that his team does not lose focus when it has a big lead.
“That’s something we’re constantly talking about,” Rogers said. “When you have somebody down 2-0 you don’t want to let them back in; you want to keep on them.”