The Gordon Lee Lady Tro-jans chopped down another larger school on Wednesday, rebounding from a game down to knock off Class AAAA Rome 12-15, 15-3, 15-11 in front of an excitable crowd at the Ware Jewell Center.
The win was Gordon Lee’s third in a row over a much larger school after downing Class AAAAA Murray County and Class AAAA LFO on Mon-day. It also boosted the Lady Trojans’ overall mark to 8-1-1 on the year.
“The LFO win was a big confidence booster for us,” said head coach Heather Tay-lor. “It showed us no matter how far down we got, we could come back.”
The Lady Trojans started the afternoon on cruise con-trol, storming out to a quick 5-0 lead in game one. But leading later on 9-3, the game began to slip away as the Lady Wolves came back to knot the game at 12-12. Rome scored the final three points to take game one 15-12.
“After that first game, Coach Taylor told us not to be intimidated,” said sophomore Amanda Browning. “She said it was just a mental thing. We just sucked it up and got going."
That they did. The Lady Trojans scored the first 11 points of the game and rolled 15-3 in game two to force a deciding game three.
In that deciding game, Rome led 7-4 when Heather Graham took serve for Gordon Lee. The sophomore reeled off nine straight service points to put the Lady Trojans up 13-7.
Rome briefly tried to rally and closed the gap to 13-11, but would get no closer. Vanessa Cordell’s ace on match point gave Gordon Lee their fifth straight win.
“We just didn’t have our minds ready to go in that first game,” Graham explained afterward. “It took us a while, but we finally started playing our game.”
Graham and Allison Watts paced the Lady Trojans with seven kills each while Kara Durham added six. Erica McCormick’s five aces led the team while Watts chipped in with three.
It was a clean sweep as the Gordon Lee junior varsity team also scored a win, downing the Lady Wolves 16-14, 15-4.
Browning, Durham and Bekah Smith tied for team high honors with two kills each. Cordell and Browning had four aces apiece while Laura McCollum added three.
The Lady Trojans travel to Tiftonia on Wednesday to face Lookout Valley and Darlington. Saturday, they head to Rome for a tournament at Darlington and then host rematches with Murray County and LFO on Monday
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