With the losing team falling out of the county-championship conversation, the Howard volleyball team simply never flinched at Atholton Tuesday night.
Instead, it had redemption on its mind.
The Lions entered the final week of last season tied with River Hill in the county standings, but lost to the Raiders in four sets, costing them a share of the county title.
At Atholton on Tuesday night, a resilient Howard team overcame a 2-1 hole and won the final two sets to avenge Atholton, 22-25, 25-21, 22-25, 25-14, 15-11, and remain tied for first place in the county standings with Mt. Hebron with one regular season game remaining.
"We set goals of winning a county title, regional title, and state title – I won't lie about that – but all the talk at practice the last two days was getting ready for Atholton," said Lions coach Grant Scott. "We never mentioned we have to win this in order to get a county title – we talked about redemption. This was a team that knocked us out last year."
The turning point for Howard (9-1 county, 11-2 overall) came late in the third set. It trailed, 20-12, when it won five straight points behind the play of Madison Paige (13 kills) and Christina Kundrat (10 kills, 5 aces, 4 blocks) to cut the deficit to 20-17. Although the Raiders (8-2, 9-4) went on to win the set on a Lisa Zoch (22 kills) kill, the momentum had shifted and the Lions pounced.
"We were down by eight points, but we played better the second half of game three and that gave us momentum for game four," Scott said. "I told them, the second half – if you play like that the rest of the way you've got this, and I think they bought into that. They bought into the momentum and used it to their advantage."
At 13-13 in the fourth set, Howard took off. It won the next eight points and finished the set on a 12-1 run, tallying seven kills – including five from Sarah Sweet (19 kills) – a pair of aces and a block to pull away.
Atholton coach Rob Moy said it was critical that his team take a few of the final points to slow the momentum and regain confidence, but it never happened.
"That fourth game we had it, and once we let that slip away it was not good," he said. "... Once we won that third game we were feeling very confident but once we started missing points they started pulling away and we lost our confidence, and that was it. It was hard to come back from. We needed momentum but we just couldn't get it going."
Scott agreed: "If we would've given them a five-point run there at the end of game four, it probably would've been a different outcome."
The Raiders jumped out to an early 3-1 lead in the fifth set behind two kills and an ace from Sam Miller (16 kills), but the Lions bounced back and took control behind their middle hitters, Kundrat and Sara Binkley (9 kills, 2 blocks). Kundrat gave Howard a lead it wouldn't relinquish by serving three straight aces to make it 8-5.
"[Kundrat] has got a great serve. That was huge. That was the run," Scott said. "When she got those, I said that was our run, and you have to get a run in game five or you can't win. ... My middles won the fifth set. I harp and I harp – get my middles involved. When they're involved, good things happen."