Gilmer High volleyball kicked off its area schedule last week.
The Lady Cats traveled to Cherokee Bluff Tuesday to face the Bears and the Hart County Bulldogs. The Cats lost in two sets to Cherokee Bluff before defeating Hart, 2-0.
The Bears reeled off wins of 25-15 and 25-17. Cherokee Bluff’s attacking style coupled with Lady Cat mishits were too much to overcome.
The Cats in turn had trouble getting their offense going and were limited to 13 kills in the match. Elly Callihan was the top hitter with five and Taylor McCormick had four.
Beth Burnette was there for seven assists and five digs, and Emma Callihan collected five assists and six digs. Hope Colwell led the Cats with 10 digs, and GHS players combined for three blocks and three aces.
“They had a lot of long-ball hits that we were not used to and couldn’t adjust well enough to dig them up to get good sets for our hitters,” coach Donna Parks said. “Since then, we have worked on how to better rotate to handle this in the future. We also had more missed serves than we usually do in this match.”
GHS defeated Hart 25-17 and 25-19. Emma Callihan and Burnette provided 10 and nine assists, respectively, and kills were tallied by Elly Callihan (eight), Emma Deyton (five), Burnette and McCormick (four apiece) and Kadie Weaver (two).
Deyton also scored three points from the service line as Burnette and Elly Callihan both had two aces and Adrian Thompson was there for one.
GHS was back at it the next day at Fannin County High School. Gilmer only needed three sets to beat the Rebels (25-13, 25-12, 25-15) using a best-of-five format.
The Cats’ offense was rolling and racked up 33 kills scored by Elly Callihan (17), McCormick (seven), Deyton (five) and Weaver (four). Setters Emma Callihan and Burnette kept the assists coming with 18 and 12, respectively.
Seven of McCormick’s serves found the court for aces and dig leaders included Colwell (13), Burnette (eight), Deyton and Emma Callihan (seven apiece).
“This was our second match with Fannin this year, and I could tell that the girls were really improving by comparing to how we played them the first time,” Parks said.
The junior varsity Cats lost their matches to Cherokee Bluff and Hart but came back Wednesday to defeat Fannin. All three matches only needed two sets.
The varsity is 9-3 overall
and traveled to Chestatee at press deadline. The Cats will host Christian Heritage Thursday with matches beginning at 5 p.m.