Broughton downs Leesville Road, closes in on Cap-8 volleyball title

Broughton is closing in on its fourth straight Cap-8 Conference volleyball title after a crucial 3-1 victory against visiting Leesville Road on Tuesday night (25-20, 23-25, 27-25, 25-22).

BROUGHTON

The Caps (15-1, 10-1) withstood big graduation losses from last year to keep its run of conference titles – three consecutive outright titles plus a 2013 co-title with Wakefield. It wasn’t as hard of a transition as it might first appear, said senior Kalee Vanderhorst.

“We all knew how to play and we were all leaders so it made it easier,” said Vanderhorst, who had 20 kills and 18 digs.

Coach Jim Freeman said he has made a change in his lineup, going to a more conventional look moving freshman Jade Demps (11 kills) back to middle blocker. Better team defense allowed the Caps to get into their offense easily as junior Claire Sawyer had 43 assists.

“We had to get a better block,” he said.

LEESVILLE ROAD

Despite the loss, the Pride (14-3, 9-2) was pleased with its performance.

Leesville was hoping to match a previous 3-2 win against Broughton. But the main thing for the Pride was that its young team – only four are seniors and at times five sophomores are on the court together – didn’t fold under pressure. Broughton made a big run to take the third set 27-25 after falling behind 23-21 but it was a credit to the Caps and no fault of the Pride’s.

“We’ve been working a lot on our maturity,” coach Erin Hensler said. “We have not played a match this consistently well with our maturity and calmness and focus. It was definitely our focus tonight was to stay calm under pressure and we did a marvelous job of executing it.”

This story was originally published October 12, 2016 at 10:09 AM with the headline "Broughton downs Leesville Road, closes in on Cap-8 volleyball title."