YOUR AD HERE »

Roaring Fork sweeps districts; Basalt KO’d

Phil SandovalGlenwood Springs Correspondent

GRAND JUNCTION – Four matches, four wins, four 3-0 sweeps. Perfect. Roaring Fork had few problems bringing the Class 3A District 5 volleyball title home to Carbondale. As an added bonus for Roaring Fork (17-3), which also raised its winning streak to 13 matches, the Rams might be in line to host a regional tournament this weekend. Hotchkiss gave Roaring Fork a slight scare in game one of Saturday’s championship game. The lead shifted 10 times before kills from Sarah Armstrong allowed the Rams to pull ahead, then win 25-23. “That gave us a little oomph,” said junior Ashley Jammeron. “It was an incentive to play harder and finish the game.”The Rams slammed the door shut quickly, winning the next two games by margins of five (25-20) and nine (25-16) points.Jammeron said game two was the turning point of the championship match.”That’s when we came together as a team. It wasn’t so much of a struggle because we put them away so fast,”she said.The morning pool-play matches – both 3-0 wins – took more effort that the Rams expected. Olathe fell quickly, 25-13, 25-16, 25-18, but Gunnison was tougher to crack. The Cowboys expelled a lot of the Rams’ energy and the team’s psyche in back-to-back 25-22 outcomes in games one and two.”The girls freaked out,” said coach Karen Crownhart. “That makes me the most nervous. We beat them in three and we got out of it fine, but the girls were thinking that we were going to lose.”Instead, the Rams, fortified by a 2-0 lead, wrapped up the match 25-18 to move to the semifinals against Cedaredge, which took short leads in all three games, but never capitalized.Longhorns’ season ends Basalt failed to advance from pool play, but gave Hotchkiss a scare in the first match for both teams.The Longhorns rallied from a 25-13 game-one loss to a 2-1 lead by winning games two and three only to see the Bulldogs win the match with the next two games, 25-17 and 15-12.The first match seemed to sap most of Basalt’s pep as Cedaredge eliminated the ‘Horns from the tournament with a 3-0 (25-12, 25-11, 25-20) sweep.