Lady Wave hitter Kristyn Arvizo goes up for the kill during Tuesday's 3-0 loss to Truckee.
In desperate need of a victory, the Fallon volleyball team came up against a buzzsaw.
Cutting and slicing its way through the Lady Wave defense, the Truckee Wolverines emerged with a 25-20, 25-15, 25-18 Northern Division I-A win on Tuesday.
“I’m actually able to take advantage of my hitters,” Truckee coach Erika Murphy said. “Usually, I’m really focused on ball control.”
Truckee (8-2 league) was anchored by their front line of Maia Dvoracek, Lauren Anderson, Madison Haley and Taylor Stevens.
After holding off Fallon (4-7) in the first set, Truckee’s full arsenal was on display to earn a pair of convincing wins in the final two games.
Fallon tied the second set at 7 on a block by Haylee Paladini, but the Wolverines went on a 6-2 run to pull away. Stevens scored on a block and Dvoracek put away a blast to spark the run.
Anais Fay got in on the action with a block to put Truckee up 14-10, but Fallon countered with a kill from Evan Matheson, who had a team-high 11 kills.
“We changed the lineup from last weekend,” Fallon coach Patty Daum said. “We controlled the game until we made an unforced error. Then is compounded into two and four …”
Leading 14-10, Truckee scored eight straight points including a tip from Anderson and a dig by Katie Fisher that fell harmlessly in the middle of a pack of Lady Wave players to put Truckee up 22-10.
Fallon’s short-lived rally was sparked by a tip from Whitney Skabelund and an ace by Matheson.
Truckee, though, iced the set on a blast by Dvoracek, the smooth hitting lefty.
“I got her for two more years,” Murphy said of Dvoracek. “Dayton was happy to have Madi (Foley), but I got a left-handed Madi.”
The third set started with promise for Fallon as it took a 4-3 lead after a kill by Kyla Kincaid. But Truckee was too much to handle.
Tied at 5, the Wolverines ripped off nine of the next 14 points thanks in part to several hitting and service errors by Fallon. If the set was in question, Dvoracek put those rumors to rest with a ferocious blast off the chest of Fallon’s Miranda Ford, who had no chance to dig the powerful spike.
Fallon, though, did rally to tie the set at 16 on another Paladini block, but Truckee answered with a 9-2 run to seal Fallon’s fate.
“When I gave them locations to be disruptive, they were spot on,” Murphy added. “We really didn’t spend a lot of time on serving.”
Fallon’s troubles, though, once again came via unforced errors. Serving into the net or out bounds killed momentum and the hitting errors dismantled the Lady Wave’s rhythm.
“Unforced errors,” Daum said. “My right side didn’t do well tonight. We had a lot of blocking errors and hitting errors. A lot of their offense come from the right side and my right side really struggled tonight.”
Truckee, meanwhile, is finally coming into form after the Wolverines missed nearly 10 days of practice time due to smoke from the King Fire in September.
They sit in third place, one game back in the loss column of Lowry (8-1) and three ahead of South Tahoe and Dayton, who are each 6-5 as of Wednesday.
Fallon, meanwhile, is all but in a must-win situation to reach the playoffs. It’s a tough road as the Lady Wave visited South Tahoe on Thursday (results not available at press time) and host Lowry and Dayton next week.