Setter Vikki Smith and her Lehman teammates will head to the Seguin Tournament this weekend. (Photo by Judy Cooper)

by MARK CAUL

There’s no place like home; there’s no place like home.

That could easily be the mantra of the Lehman volleyball team. At this point you almost expect to hear their heels clicking and feel a big tornado-like gust of air swirling around them, sweeping their opponents away in the process as they thumped the visiting Lanier Vikings in straight sets to capture their third consecutive home match last week.

The 25-8, 25-12, 25-6 destruction of Lanier was one of their most impressive wins of the season and gave them their fourth victory of the year.

“We dominated from start to finish and we played some of the best volleyball we’ve played all season,” Lehman head coach Gloria Sandoval said. “Our hitters did a great job of finding spots in their defense and making every swing count.”

Lehman (4-5) got off to a quick start in the first game with senior Mariana Filipi banging consecutive kills down the middle of the Lanier defense and Vikki Smith adding a pair of aces to give the Lady Lobos an early 5-1 lead.

From there, the Lady Vikings couldn’t muster much of a challenge as a host of reserves saw the floor for Lehman throughout much of the remaining part of the match.

Lanier led only once the entire night, 5-4, in the second game of the match before Filipi slammed home another one of her team high 14 kills to tie the score at 5-5 and the Lady Lobos continued to cruise from there.

Sophomore Imani Fairman finished with five kills in the win while twins Vikki and Alex Smith each contributed eight aces to lead the Lady Lobos in that category.

Vikki Smith also had 23 assists in the win.

“Overall, we are starting to improve on a lot of areas we were struggling in earlier in the season,” said Sandoval. “We’ve worked a lot harder in practice to correct some of those things.”

A few nights later, Lehman came out sizzling again in a road game against the Hendrickson Lady Hawks, winning the opening set 25-19 behind the team of Filipi and Vikki Smith.

But Lehman was no match for the balanced attack of Blaine Koester, Hanrahan Zoey and Brittany Gray. The Hendrickson trio tallied 10 kills each to spark the Lady Hawks to a four-set win over the Lady Lobos winning the final three games 25-18, 25-23 and 25-15.

“They pretty much blocked or digged everything when we tried to score after the first game,” Filipi said. “We could have done some things differently.”

Hendrickson (5-6) has reeled off three straights wins after beginning the campaign with three consecutive losses under first-year head coach Nicole Parks.

Sandoval will be looking to make adjustments for the Seguin Tournament this coming weekend.

“We will continue to work on the things we need to work,” Sandoval said. “But I think our team is much better than we were a few weeks ago.”