Allen Community College’s volleyball team had its hands full Wednesday evening, with visiting Highland Community College — ranked ninth in NJCAA-Division II coming to town.
Sure enough, Allen played evenly with the Scotties in the first and third sets, but Highland made the plays that counted at the end, to emerge with a straight-set victory.
Allen’s 25-19, 25-11 and 25-13 defeat drops the Red Devils to 7-7 on the season. Highland improves to 19-1.
“Overall, I’m happy with the first and third sets, especially in the third,” Red Devil head coach Whitney Shaw said. “But we got stuck in the second set, and couldn’t get out of it.”
A steady diet of Highland’s outside hitters, their centers measuring 6-3 and 6-7, respectively, and a few too many Red Devil errors set the tone.
“I’m proud of the girls,” Shaw said. “They’re pretty tough-minded. We could have just come out and laid down in the third, but they didn’t do that.”
Indeed, Allen attacked from the outside, with Gabriella Dominguez, Madison Saia, Bethany Williams and Sadie Bakeberg relentlessly pounding the ball at Highland’s front line players.
The Red Devils zipped out to an 8-3 lead in the third, forcing an early timeout call by the Scotties to catch their breath. Highland pulled even at 9-9, setting in motion a series of back-and-forth swings of momentum for the balance of the match.
“We definitely traded runs,” Shaw said. “It was a little disappointing we got to 20 first, but couldn’t get the last five points to finish the set.”
Allen took its last lead at 23-22, but Highland rattled off three straight to complete the win.
Dominguez led with 14 points, followed by Saia with eight. Ariana Compean racked up 26 set assists.
Andrea Maldonado had a team-high 15 digs, followed by Compean with 13. Arivette Santos notched 12 digs and Alexis Hafenstine 10.
Bakeberg and Lauryn Holloway each had three blocks.
