Lakeland Christian and McKeel Academy are an even 5-5 against one another since August of 2016, but not for long. The Lakeland Christian Vikings will head out to take on the McKeel Academy Wildcats at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday. Both come into the match bolstered by wins in their previous matches.
Lakeland Christian took a loss when they played away from home on Monday, but their home fans gave them all the motivation they needed on Tuesday. They narrowly escaped with a win as the team sidled past Santa Fe Catholic 3-2.
It was an exciting match in which no team won back-to-back sets, but at the end of the day Lakeland Christian got the one that really mattered. The match finished with set scores of 25-19, 22-25, 25-19, 17-25, 15-11.
Meanwhile, McKeel Academy had already won eight in a row and they went ahead and made it nine on Tuesday. They came out on top against the Braves by a score of 3-1.
McKeel Academy had a slow start but a hot finish: after dropping the first set, they turned around to win the next three. The final score came out to 22-25, 25-22, 26-24, 25-16.
McKeel Academy's success was spearheaded by the efforts of Nikole Gillingham, who had nine digs and two aces, and Sofia Burke, who had 11 digs, two aces, and two aces. The dominant performance gave Gillingham a new career-high in aces.
McKeel Academy was lethal from the service line and finished the game with 11 aces. That strong performance was nothing new for the team: they've now served at least nine aces in three consecutive games.
Lakeland Christian's record now sits at 6-13. As for McKeel Academy, they pushed their record up to 13-5 with the victory, which was their sixth straight on the road.
Lakeland Christian came up short against McKeel Academy when the teams last played last Saturday, falling 2-0. Can Lakeland Christian avenge their loss or is history doomed to repeat itself? We'll find out soon enough.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
