Greenwood had a surefire way to deal with District 14 volleyball rival South Warren on Thursday night.

In a sport where momentum plays a huge role, the Lady Gators simply wouldn’t allow the host Spartans to get rolling in an early-season test for both programs.

Greenwood never gave up a service run of more than four points – and that, just once – as the Lady Gators earned a 3-0 (25-21, 25-16, 25-16) win to take sole possession of first place in the district standings.

“We work on that, regaining composure because every point in volleyball ends in some sort of mistake,” Greenwood coach Allen Whittinghill said. “So you can’t let it weigh you down. When you do make mistakes or there’s bad passes, you’ve got to regain your composure. That’s one of our big themes in practice and during games.”

Greenwood (10-1 overall, 4-0 District 14) made few mistakes Thursday, forcing the Spartans to work for nearly every point by limiting service errors to a handful and keeping the hitting errors to a minimum. At the same time, the Lady Gators used their size advantage along the front of the net to devastating effect by stymieing attacks with blocks and unloading on the attack from all over the floor.

Senior Emmie Bender led the Lady Gators with 17 kills and sophomore Katie Howard had 14, but Greenwood got solid contributions from all its hitters thanks to a strong night by senior setter Julia Kennedy.

“Our defense did really well tonight and so starting with defense, you get that first ball,” Bender said. “Julia is a phenomenal setter, so you get the first ball and you have a great setter – she can set anyone, so it kind of sets up where we have the whole net to use.”

Bender gave Greenwood a bit of breathing room in the first set with three straight kills to stretch a one-point lead to 12-8 and the Gators pushed that out to as many as seven.

South Warren (9-1, 4-1) cut the deficit to 23-21 on dink from junior Erin Nerland, but Howard answered with a kill and the Spartans lost the set on a net violation.

Greenwood powered up in the second set, scoring 14 points off kills to to take a 25-16 win. Many of those kills came off the Spartans’ blocks as the Lady Gators just blasted through to find open spots on the floor.

“The tempo that they play at, if they get a perfect ball up there it makes it really tough on our defense,” South Warren coach Justin Griffin said. “And being undersized at the net, we don’t touch some of those balls. Even when we did with some of those, they went off the blocks for kills.”

It was more of the same in the third set. Although the Lady Gators struggled nearly as much as South Warren in reeling off significant runs, the two- and three-points spurts came with greater consistency as they pulled away for a match-clinching 25-16 win.

“South is a great program,” Whittinghill said. “They don’t give you anything. You’ve got to fight for everything you get and I feel like our team’s the same way. It’s always an interesting battle.”

Howard said the Lady Gators benefitted from a strong defensive night, keeping balls in play and limiting the Spartans to just two aces while blunting some of South’s hitting power at the net.

“They have such great hitters and it’s always fun to play against them, especially when our block is working really hard and making sure we get our hands on it,” Howard said. “Defense is working around them really well and I think we’re just all going together really well.”

Griffin found a few things to work on in practice after the Spartans’ first defeat this season, among them the service game.

“I don’t know if we were serving conservative, but it just felt like we didn’t serve with the aggressiveness that we have,” Griffin said. “Against a team like that, you’ve got to keep them off the net to have a chance. We didn’t give ourselves an easy opportunity to make runs. We’ll try to fix that, but when they’re in system it’s tough to handle.”

Nerland had 11 kills to lead the Spartans, who host Warren East on Tuesday.

Greenwood will be on the road Friday for the Crossroads Classic in Effingham, Ill.{&end}