Generals too much for Bison

By Jeremy Stafford -- jstafford@nvdaily.com

QUICKSBURG -- Stonewall Jackson hitter Heather Stout said Marisa Moomaw's serves move like a screwball. Moomaw's serves aren't especially fast, but they're difficult to read, and have the potential to land most anywhere on the court.

"In practice it's just crazy -- we'll watch her serve and it'll just be moving and we're like, 'Wow,'" Stout said. "If she's on a good night, just watch out."

But Moomaw doesn't have just one errant, unpredictable serve. She can zip a long blast to the back of the court, or bend a short one, so that it grazes the top of the net, and falls untouched to the floor.

In a 3-0 (25-13, 21-11, 25-15) win over Buffalo Gap in a Shenandoah District tournament quarterfinal match on Monday, Moomaw had three aces, and more importantly, 14 service points.

"Marissa Moomaw has one of the deadliest serves," Stonewall coach Sophie Stout said. "It's not like it's hard, but it just curves."

In the first set, Moomaw took her place at the service line with her Generals leading the Bison 15-11. By the time she sent a service error into the net, Stonewall had taken a commanding and demoralizing 19-11 lead.

And Moomaw's serving soon became contagious. Heather Stout served for three aces and 12 service points, while Nadene Pence had a match-high six aces and 15 service points.

Obviously, the Generals have come a long, long way since the beginning of the season, when Sophie Stout said her focus during practices was "just keeping it in [play], because we were so erratic the first few games serving."

And it's a good thing, too, that the serves were falling so often, and seemed so effortless. Just before the match, the Generals were treated by their parents to a lush, rib-sticking dinner of pizza, lasagna and cookies. Setter Whitney Wilkins joked that, playing on such heavy stomachs, the Generals' offense fell idle in the first set.

Still, Stonewall had 10 kills in that first set -- Heather Stout accounting for five of them -- and took advantage of a young, undersized Buffalo Gap team. Stout had 21 kills in the match, bringing her season total to an area-leading 393, while Wilkins' 29 assists brought her total to 565, also first in the area.

But the individual performances of Heather Stout and Wilkins, though impressive, have given the Generals the unfortunate stigma of being a one-dimensional team this season. That stigma may have been erased last night.

Pence, Ashlie Clar and Haylee Bowers each had six kills, and showed just how diverse Stonewall has become in the latter half of the season. And with Pence and Clar both lofting sets to each other, Wilkins had the luxury of sitting on the back row, where she solidified the Generals' defense and sent sure passes into the setter's box.

"If I'm passing, we always try to keep Nadene or Ashlie on the other side of the court," Wilkins said. "That way if I pass, I just have to go right up to them and they can set it, and it's still the same [offense]."

Stonewall's win on Monday not only sends the Generals to the tournament semifinals on Wednesday, it also rectifies a district quarterfinal loss to Buffalo Gap from a season ago.

Stonewall will play Luray on Wednesday at Eastern Mennonite University for the right to play in the Region B tournament, and although veteran players like Heather Stout, Pence and Wilkins have had experience playing in the EMU gym, many of the young Generals will have to fight the urge to become overwhelmed by the magnitude of the atmosphere.

"That will be an eye-opener to some of these younger kids, it really will," Sophie Stout said. "They've got to get acclimated to that setting -- just the gym itself.

"We're the second game, so I'm hoping we can go up a little early and the girls can kind of get used to where they're gonna be."