Lewis-Palmer, No. 1 in 4A, beat Legend, No. 1 in 5A, in volleyball on Thursday. More photos. (Jack Eberhard/JacksActionShots.com)
MONUMENT — The timing was too good to be true.
Just ahead of the showdown between the Legend Titans and the Lewis-Palmer Rangers, the Titans climbed to the top spot in the CHSAANow.com Class 5A rankings. Lewis-Palmer maintained its top ranking in the 4A poll, a position they never relinquished last season.
But the Rangers (3-0 overall) showed exactly why they finished last year as the best team in the country, according to MaxPreps. Lewis-Palmer beat the Titans 3-0 (25-23, 25-17, 30-28), proving once again they are a top team in the state, regardless of classification.
“This is only our third match and I think after our first two, we hadn’t really gelled yet,” Lewis-Palmer coach Susan Odenbaugh said. “This was a nice victory for us because we stayed together, we played as a team and I think everybody contributed.”
Odenbaugh wasn’t wrong about the distributed contributions from her team.
In the first set, the Rangers got key kills from Kess Krutsinger, Michaela Putnicki, Elizabeth Reich and Nicole Mack to help build a 24-20 lead. The Titans (6-1) were able to regain two points, but Krutsinger slammed the ball home for a set-ending kill to put the Rangers up 1-0.
The second set belonged to Mack early. Two early kills helped balance the Legend attack and another to tie the set at 12-12. She added another to give Lewis-Palmer a 17-14 lead before Reich and Mariah Evans exchanged kills and even threw in some defense with a double block to put the Rangers up 2-0 in the match.
“We’re feeling really good,” Mack said. “We know there needs to be some improvement, but we’re feeling really good early.”
More photos. (Jack Eberhard/JacksActionShots.com)
The Titans refused to go quietly and upped their level of intensity in the third set. They could never pull away from the Rangers, but they were able to exchange the lead several times and not let themselves get dug into a hole like they had in the two sets before.
The set was tied 24-24 before a Lydia Bartalo kill gave the Rangers match point. But the Titans continued to battle and stretched the set out, even getting their own set point twice in the series.
But Reich continued to dominate the net and put the Rangers up 29-28. An attempted Titan kill to tie the game landed out of bounds, giving Lewis-Palmer the win.
“I think what this does for is expose little things that we want to continue to work on,” Legend coach Katie Winsor said. “In playing the best teams in the state, that’s what you hope for, is to get better at those things, and they performed really well. They’re an awesome team.”
Despite being up 2-0 in the match, one of the most impressive aspects of Odenbaugh’s team is that they didn’t let themselves get too comfortable, even with the cushion.
“We talked going into the third set that what tends to happen after the first two is we do get a little complacent,” Odenbaugh said. “We let up a little bit in that third set as we talked about how to maintain and play as if we were down 0-2. We maintained our level of intensity, but I thought that what happened on the other side of the net is that they elevated their intensity.”
The Titans will now venture into league play as they host Regis Jesuit on Tuesday. That same night, the Rangers will head north to take on Highlands Ranch in non-league play.