After a pair of nice victories last week, the Bradford volleyball team was brought back down to earth by a powerful Ridgway squad. The Lady Owls fell to the Lady Elkers in straight sets (25-18, 25-14, 25-21) on Tuesday night to drop to 2-2 on the season.
“They played well and we didn’t,” BHS coach Steve Burgess simply said. “We didn’t execute our game plan tonight. We didn’t do a lot of things right tonight.”
Ridgway came into the match fresh off its triumph in the Elk County Tournament, where the Elkers won all six of their matches against Elk Catholic, St. Marys, and Johnsonburg. From the first point, they showed just how tough an opponent they would be, jumping on Bradford early with powerful shots and great passing. In no time, Ridgway had a 12-4 first set lead.
But the Owls made a nice comeback and eventually closed the gap to 18-19. Unfortunately for them, Ridgway ended the set on a run of its own to take the early lead.
The second set wasn’t quite as competitive as the first. Ridgway’s players always seemed to be in the right position. Once they got there, they were able to keep Bradford off balance with a deft mix of powerful spikes and finesse shots.
As a result, the Elkers raced out to a 23-8 advantage in the set, and a late Bradford run only served to close the gap a bit.
“We know we can do a lot better,” Burgess said. “We just have to get to that point. It’s a tough loss because we’re a much better team than what we showed tonight.”
Bradford was actually able to take an early lead in the third set, showing some better team play en route to an 8-4 run to begin the set. For a moment, it seemed like the Owls would have a chance to repeat the type of comeback victory that they pulled off on Thursday when they came back from two sets down to defeat Sheffield.
But this time around, it simply wasn’t meant to be.
“We looked pretty good on Thursday night when we came back against Sheffield,” Burgess said. “I was hoping to build on that, but tonight we just couldn’t put it together.”
The Elkers went on another big run, and despite a late push from Bradford, closed things out with a bevy of powerful shots to end the match.
Ashton McGriff led Bradford with nine kills, while Brinya Moffett added six. Lauryn Kahle notched 11 assists, and Erica Marshall tallied eight digs.
Moving forward, Burgess said he will be looking to his seniors to help the rest of the team learn from losses like last night’s.
“We have a lot of seniors on the team and in the huddle I said that’s the part of the team that has to bring everybody up and up their level,” he said. “I look to them for leadership and they’ve got to push for the team to come together and get some wins.”
Bradford will travel to face Johnsonburg on Thursday, where Burgess will surely be hoping for a better outing from his squad.
“We’ll learn from our mistakes, watch a little bit of film,” he said. “We’ve definitely got some more work ahead of us.”
