By BRITTANY
WHITTINGTON
News-Sun correspondent
AVON PARK - There was much at stake coming into Thursday's match between Avon Park and Lake Placid.
The country rivalry was one thing, that it now comes with district seedings adds to it, and on this night it would be to see who would go into the district tournament as second and third seed.
Avon Park proved that they were more than worthy of stealing that second spot away from the Dragons.
This match was much more stressful than the last meeting between these two last week.
While Avon Park still managed to pull off a sweep, Lake Placid certainly upped its' effort to keep it close throughout.
The three sets were finished with scores of 25-21, 25-21 and 25-23.
"They did play us a lot tougher this time," says Red Devil head coach Stephanie Devlin in reference to Lake Placid. "The difference tonight was we were on our offense."
"I had confidence in my girls that we could play just as tough this time as we did last time."
Coach Devlin did indeed have every right to have confidence in her team.
Yes, they were not blow outs by any means, but they were well deserved wins.
Every element was falling into play for the Red Devils; with their offense being their main weapon.
Across the board for their hitters, the number of kills was fairly even, including setter Otaysha Smith getting a few kills for herself.
The emotion on the opposite side of the net was pleased as well.
Although Lake Placid walked away with the loss, head coach Linette Wells still was able to come up with positive things to say about the night.
"A lot better than last time, except we were making way too many errors," she said. "We moved players around throughout the set to see what rotation meshed the best and I think we have found it."
She also explained that they are taking the matches game by game and cleaning up their mistakes.
A major source to the Green Dragons loss was their amount of errors, which according to Wells totaled 40 on the night.
In order to turn things around, they are going to have to eliminate the majority of those errors.
The Lady Dragons have one shot to decrease the amount of errors they were making on Tuesday as they finish off the regular season for their senior night.
Sunday, October 14, 2012 - www.newssun.com/SUN-10-14-12-APLPVB