Emery starts volleyball season with a win over Carbon

By Gary Arrington Sports Writer

The 2014 volleyball season started well for the Emery High volleyball team last week as the Lady Spartans traveled to Carbon High and opened the season with a five-set win over the Lady Dinos. The scores for the sets were 16-25, 26-24, 25-23, 12-25 and 15-11.
The Emery team played well together and individually to claim the win over the historically good program that Carbon enjoys year after year. Carbon jumped on the Lady Spartans in the opening set as they were still trying to work out the first game jitters of the season. After that opening loss, the Lady Spartans played well in winning the next two sets to keep the home team on the ropes.
Starters Ashton Bell, Lexie Huntington, Bailey Rasmussen, Emily Olsen and Cassidy Labrum who are all seniors and junior Bayler Griffin blended their talents into a good team effort.
Camrey Johnson and Jessica Olsen were the two substitutes that played in the game, Johnson for Rasmussen on the back line and Jessica for Griffin on the front line.
In the fourth set, Emery lost the set as they played not to lose rather than playing to win and it cost them as they forgot momentarily what got them to this point in the match. They tried not to make mistakes rather than hitting the ball hard at their opponent and the Dinos capitalized on this.
The coaches thought they became too conservative.
In the fifth set, Emery grabbed the lead at the beginning and then played well in winning the set and the match.
It was apparent from the onset that they wanted to win this one.
Bailey, Ashton and Cassidy combined on the night to have 26 kills as the Dinos could not just concentrate on stopping one Emery player. Emily had 25 assists for the night as she was doing the right thing with the ball. Cassidy also served well throughout the entire evening and she, Ashton and Jessica each had two aces on the night.
The Emery coaches are excited as the season has now begun and they believe the season will be exciting and the Lady Spartans will be fun to watch.
The Lady Spartans played in a tournament in St. George over the weekend and will open their home season this Thursday with a game against Payson in the Spartan Center.