CLEVELAND, Tenn. - The District 5-AAA volleyball match Tuesday at Cleveland High School looked like the battle for first place that it was. Or at least at times it did.
There were stretches that went back and forth between Walker Valley and Cleveland. There were stretches of control taken by both teams.
But in the end the host Lady Raiders came away with a 3-2 victory. Set scores were 15-25, 25-11, 25-23, 11-25, 17-15.
"It was not pretty volleyball on either side of the net at times," said Cleveland coach Trish Flowers, whose team was the district regular-season and tournament champion last year. "Then at times, it was really good. There's something between Cleveland and Walker Valley that just gets in everybody's heads."
The first set featured nine ties, the last at 12. The Lady Mustangs had a 7-0 run from there and finished out the set.
Cleveland (12-6, 4-0) was leading the second set 15-11, then scored the final 10 points.
The third set was close all the way. The largest lead was four points, which the Lady Raiders held twice, 8-4 and 10-6.
The fourth was the strangest set of all. Walker Valley (12-7, 3-1) was leading 2-1, then scored 18 points in succession.
The deciding set was yet another close one throughout with the Lady Raiders owning the largest lead at 13-9.
"The last set it was anybody's match," Walker Valley coach Judy Pruett said. "We made far too many errors toward the end: hitting errors and serve-receive errors. We had a chance to win."
Pruett said her team had its most successful runs when it was able to serve away from Cleveland big hitter Emma Flowers. The Lady Mustangs tried to limit her involvement, but she still came away with 40 kills. Nicole Glaser was next with nine.
"We want to use our other players," Coach Flowers said. "We have a lot of talent. It just needs to be fundamentally tweaked. We get too many unforced errors at crucial moments.
"We're still trying to figure us out. Every game we learn something new about us. Hopefully it'll get better."
Hannah Longley led Cleveland with 34 digs and Flowers added 26. Anna Renshaw totaled 51 assists.
Carly Buckner was the Lady Mustangs' kills leader with 16 and Aly Grace Lemons contributed 12. Sophie Frederick had 37 assists and Hannah Grace Moore made 26 digs.
Contact Kelley Smiddie at ksmiddie@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6653. Follow him on Twitter @KelleySmiddie.