By ALEC ETHEREDGE | Sports Editor

PELHAM – Pelham’s strong run continued to start the 2018 volleyball season with a tri-match sweep of Ramsay and Tuscaloosa County on Tuesday, Sept. 18, on the Panthers’ home court.

It’s been a strong run not just this season, but dating back to last year’s state championship run, as the Panthers have seemingly just picked up where they left off last year through the first five weeks of the 2018 season.

In Tuesday’s tri-match, Pelham took on one team a classification lower (Ramsay) and one team a classification higher (Tuscaloosa County).

While both had their own challenges, the Rams are a legitimate state championship contender in the 5A classification and challenged the Panthers in the match.

In the first set, Pelham jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the match, but it didn’t come without some hard work.

The set saw both teams battle back and forth, but in the end, the Panthers were able to make a few big plays late to pull away for a four-point 25-21 victory to start the match with a confidence booster.

In very similar fashion, the next set saw an almost identical set, but with the Rams making the late plays to pull off a victory. They were able to grab the last few points to pick up a four-point 25-21 victory of their own to force a third-set tie breaker.

While Ramsay had stolen away Pelham’s first-set confidence and went into the tiebreaker with momentum, the Panthers came into the season expecting moments like this.

Their goal before the season was to practice hard like it was an actual match so they could be fresher and better than other teams in final sets.

That’s exactly what happened in this one as the Panthers were able to play from ahead in the final set before eventually claiming a six-point 15-9 victory to pull off the 2-1 win.

Against Tuscaloosa County, there wasn’t nearly as much intrigue in the outcome due to Pelham being the better of the two teams, and the Panthers flexed their muscles in the first set to show they weren’t messing around.

In that first, Pelham played from ahead the entire time before eventually closing out a dominant 25-9 victory thanks to not allowing the Wildcats to sustain any sort of run or momentum in the set.

The second set was slightly more competitive with Tuscaloosa County scoring eight more points than the first set, but again, the Panthers’ were too fundamentally sound to not pull off the victory, which they did by a score of 25-17 to take a 2-0 win in the match.

The Panthers are now 17-2 overall and are on an impressive 11-match winning streak as they look like a team that has its sight set on this year and doing whatever it takes to win another state championship.