Fort sweeps Rockbridge

FORT DEFIANCE — Fort Defiance is one step away from completing a sweep of Southern Valley District honors. The Indians swept the Rockbridge Wildcats 25-21, 25-12, 25-23 on Tuesday night in a district semifinal match to advance to Thursday’s championship match against Stuarts Draft.

“The girls are really excited for the match Thursday. I am excited that we are playing at home, but it also comes with a lot of pressure being the host,” said Fort coach Lynn Alexander. “I am excited for a good quality game on Thursday. Winning the district, people expect you to win the championship, but it puts a lot of pressure on you. It definitely is not going to be a cake walk for us.”

The Indians continued their dominance over their district opponents with their 11th district win of the season, and will try to go for 12 on Thursday.

“It would be icing on the cake if we could win it on Thursday,” said Katie Dunsmore. “It is going to be really big. I hope we take the momentum from tonight and play even better on Thursday. We want to finish off the season strong.”

Fort started off the match a little sluggish and fell behind early to the Wildcats at 10-9, but the Indians responded and fought back to take Game 1, 25-21.

In Game 2 the Indians controlled all aspects of the game and put away the Wildcats fairly quickly with 25-12 win.

Game 3 went back-and-forth between the two teams as neither could really gain any advantage. Fort had a late lead that shrunk quickly when the Wildcats tried to make a last minute push, but in the end the Indians were able to outlast the attack as Dunsmore nailed a kill to give the Indians the 25-23 win.

“Everyone played great tonight. We played as a team and were able to keep the momentum up on our side.” Dunsmore added. “Right now we are just clicking as a team. We have really good passers, our setting is really good and our hitters are getting it done.”

The Indians were lead by Janie Layne with 18 digs and 15 service points. Jordan Leake had 28 assists and Katie Dunsmore chipped in with a team high nine kills.

“I am excited that we are already in postseason play. I think we played a good game and played on a high level, but I don’t think we played to our potential tonight,” Alexander said. “We definitely have some things that need improvement which I think is a good thing because if we were perfect, it would really be hard to hang onto for a long period of time.”