By GEORGE MAHL

RESERVE – The Riverside Academy volleyball team picked up a non-district win over Lutcher High School 15-10, 15-9 this week in Reserve.

The game had been postponed from an earlier date because of Tropical Storm Isidore.

The RA Lady Rebels jumped out to a quick, 10-3 lead in game one due to good serving from seniors Chelsea Albares and Mindy Richard. Albares led the Lady Rebels attack in the first game with two aces and two kills.

Consecutive aces from Crissy Lambert and Albares gave the Lady Rebels a four-point lead early in the first game, 7-3. Trailing 14-4 in game one, LHS began making a comeback. Kills courtesy of Daphne Zimmer led to a 6-0 run for the LHS Lady Bulldogs.

An ace from Lutcher server Cary Roussel made the score 14-10 in favor of the Lady Rebels. Just like the first game, Riverside held a commanding lead early in the second game. The Lady Rebels jumped out to an early lead because of excellent net play from their frontcourt players.

During a 6-0 run for Riverside, all but one point was the result of a kill.

Albares was responsible for three of the Lady Rebels’ six points. Albares, whose sister Adrienne is an assistant coach for Riverside, often used her tremendous leaping ability to make kills from the backcourt.

One of her kills made the score 12-4 in favor of Riverside. An ace from Richard put RA one point away from winning the match.

However, both teams’ offenses began to stall, thus giving the Lady Bulldogs life in the heated match-up.

Lutcher and RA began to break each other’s serve resulting in neither team scoring for sometime. The match finally ended when Riverside junior Allison Zeringue blocked an attempted Lutcher kill to win claim the match.

With the victory, Riverside improved to 18-6, while Lutcher fell to 10-11.