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Lady Raider Volleyball completes successful season
by Omar Arce

Last Friday the SOH women's Volleyball team played their last home game. Their opponent was the Sweetwater Red Devils. The game started with a brief ceremony recognizing the senior members of the team. Despite the brief moment of celebration, the Lady Raiders came out focused to play. In less than 10 minutes the Lady Raiders had an advantage of 18-4 in the first set with a lineup dominated by seniors. Sweetwater attempted to make a comeback with an 8 point streak. To stop the streak the Raider coaches, Mike Alviz and John Baino called for a timeout. This certainly helped, because as soon as the game resumed SOH scored. The Lady Raiders eventually won the first set 25-20 with a service error from Sweetwater.

The Lady Raiders started the second set with less seniors giving a chance to the other underclassmen to play. Nonetheless, they played as good as their senior counterparts. The Red Devils tried to win this set, obtaining a one point advantage of 13-12, but the Lady Raiders overcame the situation and won the second set.

It was the third set and the Lady Raiders only needed one more set to win the game. It looked easy, according to the previous sets, to win the third set. But it was not. The Red Devils won the first point and tried to cling to a 1-point advantage throughout the firs half of the set. But little did they know that the Raiders would overcome the deficit and finish the game in the third set with a kill by Denisse Atualevao, who was the only player to play the three sets continuously.

With this victory, SOH finishes the season with a record of nine victories and three losses, in second place of the Southbay League. The Lady Raiders will start their voyage into the play offs Tuesday November 10 at La Jolla