Lady Rattlers keep striking

A handful of games remain in the regular season and the Little Snake River Valley (LSRV) Lady Rattlers have been able to stay at the No. 2 spot for most of it. Last week, LSRV was hosted by the Hanna, Elk Mountain, Medicine Bow (HEM) Lady Miners for a 3-1 non-conference win and by the Farson-Eden Lady Pronghorns for a 3-0 conference win.

While those are good wins to get under the belt as the season nears the regional tournament, Head Coach Jenny Evans still sees room for improvement. Especially in the tough 1A Southwest Conference.

Lady Rattlers vs. Lady Miners

LSRV visited the Lady Miners on their home court last Thursday. Though the Lady Rattlers sank their fangs into HEM, the match went across four sets as the Lady Miners were able to get one win against LSRV.

"We didn't really show up to play like I wish we would have," said J. Evans. "We had an injury earlier in the week, so I sat out one of my seniors."

Along with hitting and serving errors which she said would need to be worked on, J. Evans credits the Lady Miners' returns for pushing the match into four sets. 

"Hanna did a great job in just getting the ball back to us," J. Evans said. "They're a scrappy little team as well."

HEM took the 1st set 26-24 over the Lady Rattlers, but LSRV returned in the following three sets for the eventual win with scores of 25-12, 25-23 and 25-18, respectively.

Kinlie Montgomery led the Lady Rattlers in attacking the net against HEM with 19 kills. Kylie Evans followed with 15 kills and Cashley Criswell had 10 kills. In serving, Catrina Habell served 2 aces against the Lady Miners. Defensively, K. Evans led with 22 digs and was followed by Montgomery with 17 digs and Regina Herrera with 13 digs.

Lady Rattlers vs. Lady Pronghorns

After a 3-1 win over the Lady Miners, LSRV traveled to Farson-Eden to take on the Lady Pronghorns.

"That game was fun," said J. Evans. "Farson, they came ready to play as always. Our conference is extremely tough, so you can't ever count anyone out. It was a fun environment. Farson's a scrappy team and they just kept digging up our hits and giving it back to us."

While she didn't see as many errors against Farson-Eden as she had seen against the Lady Miners, J. Evans still saw room for improvement.

The 1st set saw LSRV take down the Lady Pronghorns 25-8, but the following two sets were much closer. In the 2nd set, Farson-Eden trailed by just 3 points, 25-22, and the 3rd set ended with the Lady Rattlers ahead 25-23.

Montgomery led LSRV in attacking the net with 16 kills and was followed by Skylynn Ready with 10 kills. In serving, both Habel and Regina Herrera served 2 aces against Farson-Eden. Defensively, K. Evans had a total of 39 digs against the Lady Pronghorns with Ready following with 9 digs.

Following their two wins, the Little Snake River Valley Lady Rattlers are 19-3-2 for the season and 4-1 for conference play. Three more conference games await LSRV before the regional tournament.

"In practice, we're going to have to really step up our serving. We've been missing way more serves than what we'd like and then we're going to really focus on our serves received towards the end of the season because that's what really helps your team build and you got to have pretty good skills to be pretty competitive," J. Evans said. "So we're really going to focus on getting the ball down and keeping it in the court."

The Lady Rattlers will host the Cokeville Lady Panthers at 4 p.m. on October 15. The last time the No. 1 and No. 2 team in the 1A Southwest Conference met, Cokeville dealt a loss to LSRV. J. Evans has high hopes, though.

"Playing Cokeville at home will be fun and we just want to step up and really make that a good match and hopefully come out with the win on that."