By John Rittenhouse
Serve receiving problems led to a less-than-successful appearance for Hills-Beaver Creek at the Central Lyon Volleyball Tournament played in Rock Rapids, Iowa, Saturday.
After placing second in the 2000 version of the event, H-BC was hoping to build some momentum for the rest of the season at Saturday's attraction.
The Patriots, however, went 1-4 at the six-team, round-robin event. H-BC ended up placing fifth overall.
It looked like it might be the Patriots' day when they stormed to 15-4 and 15-12 wins over Ellsworth to open the tournament.
The way things turned out, that would be the highlight of the day as H-BC lost consecutive matches to West Lyon, West Sioux, Sheldon and Central Lyon.
"We played extremely well in the first match," said H-BC coach Nicole Fey. "After that, things fell apart for us. Our serve receive really hurt us. We couldn’t do it because we were not moving to the ball like we normally do. Our serve receive didn't allow us to get our offense going."
The Patriots played well enough to beat WL 15-11 in the first game of the second match, but the Lions won the battle with 15-12 and 15-9 victories in Games 2 and 3.
The losses to WL ignited what turned into an eight-game losing streak for the Patriots as they fell to WS by 15-6 and 15-9 tallies, they lost to Sheldon by 15-6 and 15-1 counts, and fell by 15-7 and 15-5 counts to CL.
Melinda Sandestede fueled H-BC's attack at the net by recording 39 set assists for the tournament.
Erin Boeve and Brittney Olson took advantage of the sets by recording 31 and 11 kills respectively.
Boeve and Tonya Leenderts, who led H-BC with 21 digs for the day, both went 34 of 36 in serving.