Sandites Sweep Muskogee 3-0 on Senior Night

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It was a Senior Night sweep for the Sandites Tuesday night at the Ed Dubie Field House.

The Charles Page High School volleyball team (14-15, 1-7) earned its first conference win of the season, 3-0 against Muskogee (16-13, 0-8) in a dominant performance.

“Our conference is tough,” said head coach Skyler Jackson. “The Frontier Valley is full of teams that are always contending for the State tournament. It’s good to get a win in the conference.”

The visiting Roughers took a 4-0 lead to open the match but Sand Springs soon surged ahead with a 14-point streak led by five aces from Brooklyn Shope and a trio of kills from Averi Tippit.

After losing game one 25-14, Muskogee hung much closer in game two. Muskogee led 9-8 till Adelynn Ray heated up with four aces to put her team out front for the remainder of the set.

The Roughers cut it as close as 15-13 before a kill from Shope kicked off an 8-1 run to put the comeback firmly out of reach. Shope capped the win with another ace at 25-16.

Sand Springs never trailed after 2-1 in the final game, though the Roughers never quite let the Sandites pull away.

It looked like Sand Springs would run away with things after going up 17-8 on kills from Ray, Mikayla Bradford, and Patience Pearce, but the Roughers responded with four in a row to make it 17-12.

Sand Springs finished strong, however, and Evyn Morrow capped off an exciting final rally with a kill at 25-18.

Morrow, a senior, set the tone on defense with 24 digs to accompany her kill and four aces.

“Always exceptional,” said Jackson. “Even her bad days are good days for everybody else. She’s always our spark plug. She just goes hard, loves the game, and loves her team.”

Shope ended the night with six aces while Morrow and Ray had four apiece with a team total of 17.

“We have kind of gone up and down on our serve game, so it was nice to see some consistent, tough serving today,” said Jackson.

Shope led the offense as well with seven kills, followed by Tippit with six. Ray and Hannah McKelvey had nine assists apiece and Jayden Smith had 14 digs.

Before the match, the Sandites celebrated their seven seniors: Hannah and Faith McKelvey, Tippit, Morrow, Bradford, Natalie Szabo, and Pearce.

“It’s exciting, but it’s sad,” said Jackson. “Senior Night means the end of the season is around the corner.”

“Last year’s seniors really left a big hole and these seniors really stepped up and filled the gap. They’ve evenly shouldered the weight and they’ve been real role models and great teammates.”

Sand Springs will look to ride the momentum of its first conference win into a Thursday regular season finale at No. 3 Jenks (27-5, 8-0), who has already clinched the conference title.

The girls also received their postseason assignment this week and will travel to No. 6 Bishop Kelley (18-9) on Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. The winner of that match will play for the Regional Championship at 7:30 p.m. against the winner of No. 11 Mustang (22-7) vs. Union (8-22).

“We’re just going to focus on us and continue to figure out how we can be aggressive and things that we can do to get better through that match and through our practices leading up to Tuesday.”

CPHS 3 Muskogee 0 (25-14, 25-16, 25-18)
Kills: CPHS 24, Muskogee 21.
Blocks: CPHS 2, Muskogee 1.
Aces: CPHS 17, Muskogee 5.
Service Errors: CPHS 8, Muskogee 5.
Errors: CPHS 21, Muskogee 32.

(Sand Springs Stats)
Kills: Tippit 6, Shope 6, Pearce 4, Smith 2, Morrow 1, Bradford 1, Ray 1, Egger 1, Szabo 1.
Assists: H. McKelvey 9, Ray 9, Morrow 2, Tippit 1.
Digs: Morrow 24, Smith 14, Ray 11, F. McKelvey 5, H. McKelvey 2, Pearce 2, Taff 1, Bradford 1, Shope 1.
Blocks: Tippit 1.5, Szabo 0.5.
Aces: Shope 6, Morrow 4, Ray 4, H. McKelvey 2, Tippit 1.

(Muskogee Stats)
Kills: Essex 9, Rodriguez 7, Chyenne 2, Russel 2, Ficklin 1.
Assists: Ficklin 10, Moore 4, Doughty 1, Tremblay 1.
Blocks: Russel 0.5, Lewis 0.5.
Aces: Rodriguez 2, Essex 2, Rainbolt 1.