St. Bernard's Yessi Pascual (9) and Riley Holmes (21) chase down a ball in the Lady Saints’ win over Falkville Thursday night. (Nick Griffin for The Cullman Tribune)
CULLMAN – The Lady Saints picked up a big area win over the Falkville Lady Blue Devils Thursday night thanks to a tremendous comeback. St. Bernard dropped the first two sets to Falkville before coming back to win three straight to take the match in five sets.
The Lady Saints fell behind 1-0 after a 25-20 loss to the Lady Blue Devils and they made an even bigger push in the second set. Twenty-five points wasn’t enough for the two teams to settle things in the second set and Falkville pulled away late to take the set 27-25 and a 2-0 lead in the match. Macy Whaley led the way for St. Bernard in the narrow loss, posting five kills to go along with an ace and a block.
The tables began to turn in the third set. The Lady Saints continued to fight, and with their backs against the wall, got right back in it with a 25-19 win the third. Whaley added four more kills and another ace in the win, while Riley Holmes collected three kills of her own.
St. Bernard got off to a hot start in the fourth set, going up 17-10 at one point. The Lady Blue Devils wouldn’t go away and put a scare into the home team but ultimately fell short, 25-22, forcing a tie-breaking fifth set. Whaley had another impressive set for the Lady Saints, picking up four more kills and the game-winning ace.
With the match on the line in the fifth set, St. Bernard put down Falkville 15-8 with its most dominant perfomance of the night. Claudia Fallin gave the Lady Blue Devils a lot of problems around the net as she racked up three kills and a block in the final set. Olivia Brown had a big set as well, collecting two blocks and two kills in the win.
Lady Saints Head Coach Tiffany Hinkle Pope was proud to see her team fight all the way back after getting down early, and Thursday night’s win was enough to convince her of her team’s resilience.
“This was exactly the same as the R.A. Hubbard game. We won the first set at R.A. Hubbard and then went down two and had to come back and win the last two, so I knew being mentally tough was the hardest thing for the girls to get, and I feel like this game established that we’re mentally tough,” Pope said. “This is our second come-from-behind win in the last few days. I told the younger girls to stop waiting around for the older girls to play and they did so I’m just really proud of them.”
Coach Pope said she saw several things from her team in the win over Falkville that make her optimistic about the Lady Saints going forward this season.
“Our back-row play from our libero (Bridget Gallegos) was amazing, so we have her, and if we can get everybody back healthy we’ll be in good shape,” Pope said. “We put in some little ninth graders that have never played before so the fact that we are deep now, and we know that all six people on the court can play, we can only go up from here.”
St. Bernard will look to stay on the winning side of things when the Lady Saints travel to face Vinemont on Oct. 2.
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