| Maquette Hill (11) sets the ball for a spike as East Carbon’s Brittnie Leonard (4) looks on. The Lady Vikings destroyed the Lady Mongooses with good serving and tough returns. |
It’s not good for a team to have it too easy; they need viable competition to keep their edge.
That must be the worry of both Todd McFarland and Alisa Preston, the baseball and volleyball coaches at East Carbon High.
Both teams have glossy records right now, but they are getting ready to hopefully go to state, and right now their opponents are not offering much opposition.
A week and a half ago the Vikes baseball team mashed Manila 15-0 and 15-0 in a double header at the Carbon High field.
On Tuesday night the East Carbon girls team crushed an outwomaned Meridian team 15-1 and 15-1 in the first set and then came back and this time merely horse whipped them 15-6 and 15-8 in the second set.
The Lady Mongooses (no it isn’t the “Mongeese”) have a real problem and it isn’t just that they only have 60 students in the entire school. It’s that often players come and go at the whim of parents, just as a couple did in the last week. Consequently the school only brought six players to play both the varsity sets and the junior varsity sets on Tuesday night. Just barely enough to play. Good thing no one got injured, or the Lady Vikes would have had to lend the Provo private school a team player of two.
It seems that Meridian is often used as a kind of “prep” school for the large high schools in Utah County. Students are sent there by parents who are concerned about their grades, and then the minute their grades get back in order they go back to public school. This definitely creates athletic teams in turmoil.
In fact a couple of years ago the schools baseball team began the season, played a couple of games and then ran out of kids who wanted to play.
So let’s be fair, it’s tough to field a team when the players keep changing.
Nonetheless the Lady Vikings looked pretty good. Their serving was strong and they got a lot of chances to pound the ball over the net.
Once again the seniors stepped up with Joyce Clark, Brittnie Leonard, Chelsey Timothy, Maquette Hill and Misty Valdez nailing down the victory.
In the first game, the East Carbon kids were up 12-0 before Meridian could get the ball and they scored their one lone point.
In the second game it was 8-0.
In the second set, the Lady Vikes still dominated, but not by quite so much. Many JV players were on the court for those games.
At 6-0 in league play, East Carbon is sitting pretty good in terms of state playoffs this year. However they have some much tougher games coming up.
Next week they face Tintic on Tuesday afternoon. Tintic is good and the Lady Vikes need to be on top of their game to beat the Miners.
The next and final home game is on Oct. 8 when the team faces their main competition in Region 18, the Dugway Lady Mustangs.