High School Volleyball: R.A. Long wins seesaw Civil War at Mark Morris
Five-Set Thriller – Lumberjills lean on co-captains Woodruff & Ward to halt MM rally
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High School Volleyball / Report
NATT COURT — The R.A. Long Lumberjills took Round 1 of the season’s Civil War matchups with a five-set win at Mark Morris. And that teeter-totter affair was a perfect representation of the type of back-and-fort rivalry action that Longview volleyball fans have come to expect in recent seasons.
The Lumberjills stormed out to a victory in the opening set, but then dropped the next two frames, setting up a dramatic comeback on enemy hardwood. R.A. Long ran away with the fifth set to take the contest by scores of 25-19, 19-25, 22-25, 25-21 and 15-3.
If you need a reminder of the recent history between the Jills and Monarchs, here you go — last season the two teams played four times, and split the series. The regular season series went down the middle, with each team winning on the other’s court. Then R.A. Long won a mini-tiebreaker (best-of-three) match to sort the seeding prior to the district tournament, but the Monarchs got the last laugh when they beat the Jills by two points in five sets at the dark end of the District bracket.
Got it? Good.
“I told the girls, everyone has a match circled on their calendar and 1000 percent R.A. Long had this match circled,” Mark Morris head coach Carmen Hewitt said. “We beat them at Districts last year and ended their season in a winner-to-state… I was not shocked R.A. Long came out on fire in that first set. And good for them.”
The Lumberjills would certainly agree. Especially players like Jillian Woodruff, a veteran setter who has been through more Civil Wars than she can remember. But you can bet she wakes up ready to eat grits and march to the beat of a snapping snare drum on rivalry game day.
“When we lost to them at Districts last year we were pretty beat up,” Woodruff noted. “But it felt really good to come in here and get the win in my senior year.”
— R.A. Long closes out the Civil War in dramatic fashion as Rowan Ward (3) delivers the serve, Mark Morris’ Hadley Bartell (4) blasts a hit back across the net, and then Ella Eib (1) slams home the final point for the Lumberjills to seal the five-set win. The Lumberjills’ bench and student section exploded in celebration on Tuesday, Sept. 30, at Ted M. Natt Court in Longview. —
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