By RAY BENTON
Leader sports editor
Sylvan Hills volleyball coach Harold Treadway used a lot of players in the Lady Bears’ benefit match with Hot Springs Lakeside on Thursday. All proceeds from benefit games go to the Arkansas High School Activities Association. The home team had a good start, but the mistakes started to pile up late in game one as the visiting Lady Rams rolled to a 25-18, 25-13, 25-13 win.
Treadway was playing to win, but he’s also still searching for the right combinations for a team with a lot of new faces and without a lot of experience. Despite the free substitutions and it being the first game, he still wasn’t pleased.
“Overall I’m frustrated because we didn’t do things tonight that we’d been doing in practice,” Treadway said. “We weren’t focused. Our passing has been pretty good at times in practice. It was bad tonight. Our hitting has been decent at times. Tonight it was off. I thought my setters did OK for being so young.
Treadway was referring to freshman Riley Parker and sophomore Graemme Withrow.
“You got a freshman and a sophomore out there, they’re going to make some mistakes. But overall I thought that their play was encouraging.”
In game one, with Withrow serving, Sylvan Hills rallied from a 3-5 deficit to a 9-5 lead. Senior outside hitter Cory Tessman had three-straight kills during the run. It was the largest lead for either team until late in the opening game.
Midway through game one, Sylvan Hills appeared to have blocked a Lakeside kill for a point, and the Lady Bears rotated and substituted two players. But a delayed net violation call reversed the point, but the officials failed to cancel Sylvan Hills’ rotations and substitutions.
That caused some confusion on Sylvan Hills’ next substitution and rotation, as well as a long delay. The Lady Bears were never in sync again the rest of the match.
Lakeside took serve leading 18-20 and reeled off five-straight points on one kill and four unforced Sylvan Hills errors, including a formation violation.
HSL jumped out to a quick 4-1 lead in game two and kept the margin between three and four until it took serve with a 10-7 lead. The Lady Rams then scored five in a row before Sylvan Hills broke to make it 15-8, and then scored four more in a row for a 20-8 lead that forced Treadway to call a timeout.
Game three was a lot like game one. It was back and forth up to 14-12. That’s when Lakeside’s Gaylynn Green took serve and ripped off 10 consecutive points, including four aces for a 24-12 lead.
The Lady Bears finally broke serve, but Lakeside’s Olivia Lawrence got a kill on the next point to end the match.
Tessman, a senior, led the Lady Bears with eight kills. Senior Grace Turner and junior Sydney Diamond had three kills apiece.
Lyca Steelman led all players with 10 kills while Lawrence had seven.
Treadway knew he was going to use a lot of players on the benefit game, and says it could continue. But nothing is set in stone at this point.
“I have a lot of players and they all knew I was going to play everyone tonight,” Treadway said. “It’s good to have a lot, but at the same time we’re looking for the ones that are going to get that chemistry. So we could keep playing a lot, or we could start to trim it down if we don’t get more focus out of some of them than we did tonight.”
Sylvan Hills will officially open the season at home on Tuesday against Beebe.