Skip to content

The Lady Raider Volleyball team served up a fantastic win on Wednesday over Landmark Christian who is the very team that kept the Raiders out of the state title game in 2015.  Read all about the Final Four win in this article by Savannah Morning News sports writer, Dennis Knight.  Josh Galmore captured awesome photos for the newspaper! sarah-allen-excitement

 

Savannah Christian beats Landmark to reach state finals

The players on the Savannah Christian volleyball team have had their hearts set on making it back to the state finals since the Raiders lost in the championship match to Hebron Christian two years ago.

The Raiders reached that goal Wednesday with an impressive three-set sweep of Landmark Christian, the team that had ended their season in the semifinals last season.

Savannah Christian improved to 33-6-1 on the season with the victory by set scores of 25-20, 25-20, 25-23. The victory set up a matchup with crosstown-rival and defending state champion Calvary Day in the GHSA Class A finals at 11 a.m. Saturday at Holy Innocents’ in Atlanta.

“We’re so excited and we got a little revenge by beating Landmark this time,” said senior outside hitter Landon Jones, who has committed to Georgia Southern. “It was the exact same matchups on both sides of the bracket for the semifinals. This time we had the extra drive to win. I thought our passing was the key. We stayed in system and tried to get those side outs, because Landmark has a really good offense.”

The Raiders did a good job containing Landmark star Cameron Dobbs, the two-time Class A state player of the year who has committed to Miami, and standoutgirls-and-crowd-excitement middle blocker Camille Garden.

“We knew Dobbs was going to get her share, so we just tried to play side out volleyball and really push offensively when she was in the back row,” said SCPS coach Julie Jones, the mother of Landon. “And we expected the middle blocker (Garden) to play well. We tried to keep them out of their system with our defense, and we spread the ball around well offensively.”

The stat sheet backed Jones up. Sarah Allen had nine kills and eight digs, and Hannah White had seven kills — including the match clincher. Landon Jones had six kills and six digs, Adrianna Simon added five kills and Mackenzie Riner added three blocks.

The Raiders have three players who teamed up on the setting. Sophomore Sam Zittrauer served well and had three aces and 13 assists, while senior Lainey Aenchbacher had 11 assists, six kills and six digs. Libero Emilee Wissmach contributed 11 digs, seven assists and two aces.

“We gave it our all tonight and we weren’t letting any balls hit the ground on defense,” said Aenchbacher, who has committed to Southern Miss. “We focused on stopping all of them,student-body-excitement not just (Cameron) Dobbs. The feeling of making it back to the finals is indescribable. And it’s going to be great having two Savannah teams in the finals. I’m excited to see how it goes.”

Wissmach, who has committed to Mercer University, said the win meant a lot to a team featuring eight seniors.

“We were all a little nervous, because we all knew that it’s our senior year and this is our last chance to do it,” Wissmach said. “We served aggressively, our offense played well and our defense shut them down.”ellison-reaching-the-ball