By Charles Prince

The North Jefferson News



The Tabernacle volleyball team was without one of the team’s best players, but the rest of the club picked up the slack. The club played well together from start to finish and kept their unbeaten conference record in tact, as they defeated Florence Christian 25-7, 25-18, and 25-14, Monday night in a home match.

“I’m glad to get the win,” new Tabernacle head coach Joy Miller said. “We can play a lot better than we did today. Our best setter (Meredith White) is hurt, and we played some younger girls there and we just didn’t play as well today as we did before Meredith got hurt.”

The Lady Torches started fast with the easy win in the opening game and starting the second game on an 8-1 run, but then Florence would settle into the game and began to play well.

The Lady Saints fought back to tie the second game at 13-all, before Tabernacle took control again and pulled away.

Senior Meghan Hallice had five kills in the game, including a smash to the right side with Tabernacle leading 16-13.

Later, Hallice put away three consecutive kills to boost the Lady Torches lead to 23-17, before Tabernacle went onto win 25-18.

In the third and final game of the match, it was close early, as Florence would grab the lead three times at 5-4, 6-5 and 7-6.

Tabernacle took a one-point lead at 10-9, but couldn’t shake the Lady Saints, until Hallice came up big at the net again with more kills.

With the scored tied at 10-all, Hallice scored on back-to-back kills, one to the deep right side of the court that landed about six inches from the out of bounds line, and the second which couldn’t be handled by Florence’s back-line players.

With the score at 12-10, Natalie Axt served up back-to-back aces for a four-point Lady Torches advantage.

Minutes later, Axt scored on a kill to build the lead to 16-11, before Hallice served up two aces in a three-point span for a 20-12 Tabernacle lead.

Robyn Whaley then had a hard spike to the middle for another Tabernacle kill and the lead was 21-12.

Finally, with the score at 24-14, junior Candace Coleman ended the match with a kill from the left side of the net.

With the victory, the Lady Torches improved to 5-0 in Alabama Christian Education Association play and remain unbeaten in conference play as well.

“We didn’t play as sharp as we could have,” Miller said. “We looked a little ragged at times, but hopefully our setter won’t be out too much longer and we’ll get back to playing the way we know we can play and at a higher level than what we showed tonight.”