The end of an era is nearing. Tonight was the next-to-last home game in L’s high school volleyball career. It’s likely to be highly emotional on Monday when it’s the last home game, but tonight, there wasn’t time for emotion. It was time for revenge.

Our girls were playing Hillcrest, a team that beat them 1-3 earlier in the year. However, they lost in five sets to Easley, whom our girls beat soundly in straight sets the first time they met this season and won again (though in five sets) the other night at home. It was, in my eyes, a must-win game.

The Girl thought so, too.

The Mavs started off weakly, though: they trailed most of the first set, and in the end, lost it 19-25. “The Hillcrest girls are so confident,” K observed, “despite the fact that they’ve lost their last five matches.”

Everyone knew the second set was a critical set: lose it, and it would be hard to win the match. Reverse sweeps are not unheard of, but they are rare. We pulled ahead quickly in the second set, and then launched a huge attack that ended the set with a 25-17 win.

One set each makes the third set the momentum-maker: whoever wins that one needs to win only one more set. At first, I didn’t think our girls wanted it: they trailed by about five at one point. But they pulled back and pulled ahead. Then they let Hillcrest catch up. In the end, though, they held them off and won 25-22.

The momentum was definitely on our girls’ side of the court that fourth set: they pulled ahead after being behind 1-4 and never looked back, winning a deciding third set 25-22. It extended the Hillcrest girls’ losing streak to six, and while I usually don’t like seeing someone lose like that, I didn’t mind too much tonight.

Neither did our girls.