By Dennis Atwood — Daily Sports Correspondent

STRASBURG — The Luray Bulldogs visited the Strasburg Rams on Saturday night for a non-district volleyball match of two-loss teams. The Rams took less than a hour to sandwich lopsided wins in Games 1 and 3 around an intensely close Game 2, to sweep the match (25-11, 25-23, and 25-9) and improve their season record to 9-2.

"I told the squad that in Game 2 we missed too many serves and that was difference," Strasburg coach Suzanne Mathias said. "We kept attacking and stayed aggressive."

The squads played evenly in Game 1 until the Rams, leading 9-8, benefited from a Bulldog error, which they followed with a four-point run featuring three aces by senior defensive specialist Rebecca Coffman before her fifth serve hit the net.

Ahead 15-11, Strasburg iced the game with a 10 point run, with sophomore setter Lauran Agnew stroking four aces (including the gamewinner).

Not fazed by the Game 1 loss, the Bulldogs lived up to their mascot by giving the Rams all they could handle in Game 2.

Strasburg short-circuited its first scoring streak with serves into the net after three aces by senior hitter Bethany Doman at 6-3, and again after two aces by junior setter Meghan Gum at 9-4. After a Ram serve out-of-bounds gave Luray its seventh point, the Bulldogs notched five more points on a Strasburg attack error, two aces by junior outside hitter Megan Hilliard, a block by junior outside hitter Danielle Montgomery, and a kill by senior setter Lindsey Cummings, to go up 12-11, resulting in a Strasburg timeout.

"The serves into the net are bound to happen with our aggressive serving style. It's something we work on every day — serving five or 10 in a row, with a goal of hitting five or six before one goes into the net," Mathias said.

The Rams notched 24 aces in the match. The teams traded two-and-three-point spurts and reached a tie at 18 on a soft-touch kill by Bulldog senior middle hitter Katie Cubbage and a kill by Strasburg's Stephanie Conde. After serving two more aces, Gum again served into the net, leaving the Rams up 20-19. A Strasburg error gave the Bulldogs their 20th point, and they followed up with kills by Montgomery and Cummings, before Hilliard served into the net to create a 22-22 tie.

With the game getting tense and the crowd cheering loudly, Hilliard scored a kill, followed by a Luray attack error to leave the game knotted at 23. Doman then executed a soft-touch kill, and Luray called a timeout. Not missing a beat, Doman put the game away with a kill just inside the back-left corner.

After giving Luray the first point on an attack error, the unfazed Rams mounted a devastating 11-point run featuring four more Doman aces (seven for the night), two kills by Jaclyn Ayers, a soft-touch kill by Conde, and four Luray attack errors. The Bulldogs called timeout, got their second point on a Ram serve into the net, then gave it right back to the Rams with their own net-serve.

"We were pumped after Game 1, and, after Game 2, we were wondering, how did we let them score so much?" Doman said. "So, we said, we have to get it back to the Game 1 situation, and we definitely played our game in Game 3. My serving technique is the same every time, trying to get safe serves. The more I get in, the more I snap to increase the spin and make the ball drop."

Luray (10-3 overall) scratched out its third point on a Cubbage spike, then the Rams overwhelmed the Bulldogs with an eight-point run highlighted by three consecutive aces by Ayers to build an insurmountable 22-3 lead. Perhaps finding it difficult to breathe at that lofty altitude, Strasburg gave Luray four points on attack errors, and, ahead 24-7, served out of bounds and committed an attack error before sophomore defensive specialist Ally Kauffman slammed the game and match-winning kill.

"Tonight was one of our worst nights," Luray coach Julie Rothgeb said. "Our middle hitter [junior] Alison Ross was out sick, and it threw off our rotation. Some of our girls had to play unfamiliar positions. Strasburg is definitely a good team, but tonight we were not playing our game at all. Our passing was way off, so we couldn't get any good setups."