Chattanooga Christian got Signal Mountain's attention on Aug. 30. The Lady Eagles proved so Tuesday.
Avenging its only District 7-AA loss to date, Signal Mountain defeated the Lady Chargers 3-0 in a high school volleyball match at Signal Mountain. Game scores were 25-15, 25-13, 25-19.
"I'm much happier this time," Signal Mountain coach Jennifer Redman said.
In the first meeting CCS dropped the first set, then won three. The Lady Chargers served 12 aces over the first three games that day.
"We got a lot of aces the last time we played them," CCS coach Dan Basler said. "They improved on that a lot. They played a good game. They played smart."
The Lady Eagles' improvement showed statistically, too. The Lady Chargers ended up with a total of three aces. Signal Mountain's Callie Hildebrand had five of her match-high seven aces in the 9-0 run that closed it out.
"We spent all day working on serve-receive, and hitting offense off serve-receive," Redman said of Monday's practice. "I think our serving was more aggressive this time than last time as well."
In addition to their closing spurt, the Lady Eagles had an 8-0 run, starting with a 15-14 lead in the first set. They had another 9-0 outburst, beginning with an 11-8 lead in the second.
Conversely, the Lady Chargers' largest move of the day was from down 12-10 to ahead by two in the third game.
Redman said she was pleased with four being the Lady Chargers' longest run, although she admitted she's more strict about that in practice. Two is all she'll tolerate, and running is involved.
"It keeps them thinking they've got to win the next point, instead of 20 down the line, then thinking we need to win this next point," Redman said.
Hildebrand also led Signal Mountain (20-15, 5-1) with 13 kills and 14 digs. Allie Jennings added 13 digs and Carolyn Thielges contributed nine to go with 15 assists.
CCS (14-14, 6-3) didn't get much offense going outside of Hailee Ray's 10 kills. Melina Salter was the assists leader with five.
"Our serve-receive was a problem, and we didn't pass well," Basler said. "We've been working on that a lot, but it didn't show. You can't really do too much when you don't get the ball to the setter."