Harvest Christian handles Westminster

Winning can be a soothing medicine for a lot of ailments, including growing pains in the case of Harvest Christian. The young Lions are still clearly a work in progress, but they continued to round into form on Thursday night with a 25-17, 25-17 Northeastern Athletic Conference girls volleyball win over visiting rival Westminster Christian.

Sophomore Mikayla Robinson led Harvest with 12 kills. Ellie Burzlaff added 8 kills.

"It's a nice win," Harvest coach Kim Floyd said. "But we know we still have a lot of work to do. We are taking baby steps and making progress. I thought tonight our passing was much better, but we still need to cut down the unforced errors."

Robinson continues to adjust well in just her second game after being switched from middle to outside hitter. Robinson broke a 14-14 tie in Game 1 with the kill. The Lions went on to finish with an 11-3 run.

"She has adjusted real well and I love the progress she has made," Floyd said. "She was real comfortable in the middle and would prefer to be there, but we just needed to get her more sets. The biggest adjustment for her has been getting her timing down off the net on her approaches and she's doing great with that."

Game 2 went much like Game 1. The score was tied 8-8 when Robinson knocked down back-to-back kills to give Harvest the lead for good. The Lions closed out the match with an 11-4 run to pull away late.

"We played OK," Robinson said. " And it feels good to win, but we can still do a lot better. We had some mistakes tonight. I know I hit too many balls in the net. We're going to have to keep trying to get better."

Harvest (5-5, 2-0) had a 27-10 kill advantage, but still committed 24 unforced errors.

"We are a solid team right now, but we are striving to get even better," said Burzlaff, who had 4 kills in each game. "We have a nice combination with me and Mikayla up front and Jade (Martinez) making the sets. The biggest things we need to work on are minimizing our mistakes and just trusting each other out on the floor. We are going to keep working hard to get there."

Shayna Manusos had 4 aces and a team-high 6 digs for the Lions. Martinez finished with 22 assists.

The Warriors (3-4, 1-3), who have been knocked out by Harvest in the regionals the past two years, including 25-11, 25-9 last season, actually made up some ground this time around.

"I was very pleased with the way we played," Westminster coach Guy Lum said. "We were going up a much more experienced team and I thought we stood our ground pretty well. They have a lot of hitters and it's hard to stop them, but I really liked the way we defended. We were able to make it tough on them."

Savannah Dutcher had a team-high 4 kills for the Warriors. Jackie Calabrese had 2 aces and 6 digs.