Lady Tigers win regular-season area title

Straughn swept Andalusia and Ashford in a tri-match at home to win the regular-season Class 4A, Area 2 title on Tuesday night.

The Lady Tigers dominated from the start against the Lady Bulldogs, pulling out a 25-19, 25-14, 26-8 win; and then topped Ashford 25-11, 25-9, 25-12.

SHS used a good combination of attacking the net and strong serving to have the upper hand.

“I’m excited, but I’m excited for the girls,” Lady Tigers head volleyball coach Daniel Rodgers said. “That was one of the goals that they had set was to be able to host the area tournament. I’m excited for them, that they worked hard and they were able to accomplish one of those goals.”

In the middle match of the night, the Lady Bulldogs won 25-13, 25-14, 25-20 over Ashford.

Andalusia took a short lead in the first set against SHS, but that lead went away when Jacie Williamson went at serve to give her team a 7-4 advantage. Alexis Lawrence got in a nice block to cut it to 7-5 for the Lady Bulldogs.

When Straughn would pull away in the first set, Andalusia made sure to come back. It wasn’t enough as the Lady Tigers pulled away at 21-19 to finish the opening set on top.

Williamson earned a kill for the first point of the second set, and then Katelyn Kinsaul garnered a long 11-point rally at serve to give the Lady Tigers a big 11-0 lead.

From there, AHS couldn’t recover.

At the start of set three, Rodgers proclaimed to the girls to “break it,” meaning to break serve.

The Lady Tigers (18-6, 6-0) did and Kinsaul helped her team to another rally and 14-0 lead.

Kinsaul led SHS with eight aces, four assists and three digs in the match.

“Katelyn’s second and third set got us on those long rallies. Her consistency serving has been big for us this year,” Rodgers said. “You realize that on that third set, especially, there weren’t three of those serves that were aces. Andalusia was returning, but we kept attacking. We were aggressive at the net, and they didn’t play defensive. They attacked today and I was proud of them for that.”

Williamson finished with five kills; Lexie Cottle had four kills; and Courtney Rogers had three digs.

In Andalusia’s match against Ashford, Haley Harper helped push the Lady Bulldogs to a 6-0 lead in the first set with her dominate service game. Andy went on to take a 14-8 lead, and then led 20-11 in the opener before pulling away at 22-12.

The Lady Bulldogs showed a lot of hustle and resolve in the second set, taking a 11-8 lead after a long point that was killed by Keyasha Comer.

In the last set, the Lady Yellow Jackets played tight with the Lady Bulldogs, but in the end, Andy had a better go of it to take a late lead to the house.

Against Ashford, Williamson had six aces and five kills; Paige Taylor had five aces; Kinsaul had six assists; Hannah Lawless had four assists; and Langford put together nine assists.

Andalusia head volleyball coach Angie Grimes said no comment after the loss to SHS.

In other volleyball action, Pleasant Home topped Florala 25-16, 25-11, 25-13 in straight sets.