A raucous homestand against the rival Basalt Longhorns in a non-league game Sept. 6 kicked off a week of learning, adjusting and finally some success for the Roaring Fork High School girls volleyball team.
At five wins and five losses, with a full week to fine tune things before entering the all-important Class 3A Western Slope League schedule at defending league champion Delta next Tuesday, head coach Karen Crownhart likes the Rams’ prospects.
That extra time away from competition will be used to dial it in, she said.
As is often the case when the Rams and Longhorns square off, it was an emotional battle to the end with loud student sections on both sides of the gym. In the end, the visitors from up the road escaped with a narrow five-set win, 3-2.
The Rams opened with a 26-24 win before Basalt took the second set, 25-21, Roaring Fork the third, 25-23, and Basalt the fourth, 25-23. The Longhorns claimed the tie-breaker, 15-9.
Crownhart said it was less a matter of getting beat, than Roaring Fork beating itself in a key aspect of the game — serving.
With 22 missed serves against Basalt, and another 19 during a 3-1 win over Vail Mountain at home on Monday, the Rams need to rein it in a bit from behind the service line, Crownhart said.
“We definitely struggle with our serve percentage, and just aren’t getting the balls in like we should,” she said.
What’s helping with the team’s power game at the net — the Rams tallied 41 kills and four blocks against Basalt, and another 34 and three, respectively, against Vail Mountain — will require some adjustment in the service department.
“We’re gaining quite a bit of strength, but we need to adjust our serves and not hit the back wall,” Crownhart said. “Ultimately, what we’re doing will make us a really strong team, but we can’t make those service errors.”
Senior Ruby Denning finished the night against Basalt with 12 kills, while sophomore Nikki Tardif had 10. Sophomore Yakelin Nunez Hernandez had three blocks for the Rams and juniors Carley and Erica Crownhart had seven service aces between them.
The Rams then had a 3-1 run through the remainder of their games this past week. That included wins at the South Routt County tournament on Saturday, 3-1 over Moffat County and 3-2 over Gilpin County, followed by a 3-0 loss to a tough Little Snake River team from Baggs, Wyoming.
The win against Vail Mountain on Monday saw the Rams rebound from a 25-23 loss in the first set, before running the slate, 25-23, 24-21, 25-17. Denning had another 10 kills and Nunez Hernandez had eight kills. Tardif had two blocks for the Rams, and the Crownharts had 18 digs each.
“I really think we’re more of a dominant team than our scores show,” coach Crownhart said. “We just need to be able to stay present, which is such an important part of the game with those final points.”
In other action…
With its varsity players suiting up for Glenwood Springs this season, Roaring Fork’s junior varsity football team scored another impressive win, 44-8 over Basalt, on the home turf Monday. Game stats were not immediately available.
Running cross country for the combined Basalt team, Roaring Fork junior Isabella Moon took fifth place at the Grand Junction Tiger Invitational varsity race on Saturday, with a 5-kilometer time of 20 minutes, 26.7 seconds. Roaring Fork athletes junior Morgan Fink was 25th overall in 22:20.9 and sophomore Caroline Cole was 27th in 22:31.1.