By ANDREW FAISON/CORRESPONDENT
andrew.faison@yahoo.com

COURTLAND—The Southampton High School girls’ volleyball team beat Bluestone in the semi-final round of the Southside District playoffs Wednesday night.

The Lady Indians prevailed in a four-game showdown, 25-14, 25-16, 22-25, 25-11, over the Lady Barons, who finished the season with an 11-10 record.

“We started flat in all four sets,” said SHS Coach Chad Brock, “Then we picked it up and took it away.”

The Lady Indians advance to the District final at 6 p.m. today at Powhatan High School with an automatic bid to the Regional Tournament for either next Tuesday or Thursday.

“We are going into tomorrow night with the attitude that we want to win because we can do it if we go in there with that attitude,” Brock said.

A tense game unfolded Wednesday after the Lady Raiders went up easily two sets to none.

“In the third set, we just lost focus in it, and some of it was fatigue,” said Brock, “We have not had good practices lately.”

The Lady Barons rallied back in the third game from being 10 points down at one point to win the set.

Candace Earls, who had 8 digs, 7 assists and 2 kills on the evening, led SHS.

Kendra Edwards was perfect from the line serving, with Leah Burgess, Earls and Megan Revelle all scoring 3 aces while serving. Edwards also had 25 assists.

Regina Artis had 22 kills on the evening, while Marisa Cabell had 13, and Revelle scored 9. Artis also had a dig and block.

“All in all, we ran a good technical game,” said Brock, “We covered well, we hit well, just lost focus a couple of times, and that caused us to have to play that fourth set.”

“We just have to clean it up a little bit before tomorrow,” he continued. “A lot of times we play to the level of our competition. Tomorrow (tonight) you will see a whole different team against Powhatan. We are the only team this year that has pushed them to four sets. Both times we played them, we took the first set. “