Rachel Giwa's Big Night leads Dragons Past Raiders in Volleyball Action

Written Tuesday October 8th, at 11:15 PM

The Lake Orion lady Dragons appear to be on the right track on Tuesday’s home opener against North Farmington.

The second ranked team in Class A Dragons completely destroyed the Raiders in three games 25-11, 25-2, and 25-13 to improve it’s record to 28-4-2 and 2-0 in the Red.

Lake Orion came into tonight after beating Stoney Creek in three games at Rochester in the league opener last Thursday night.

Rachel Giwa looked like a madwoman tonight, just dominating from serving 17 straight Dragon points to assisting like crazy on kills and even getting some kills herself tonight.

Kayla Rockey looks like the second coming of Sophie Murdock from the inside played very well tonight along with Hannah Murdock, Hannah Suciu, Ally Shinouskis, and the rest of the Dragons.

Lake Orion plays a very tough match on Thursday when they travel to Bloomfield Hills to meet the Blackhawks. The Blackhawks return a lot of experience and has a big front line and a solid backcourt. Bloomfield Hills shockingly lost in three games to Oxford last week and managed to beat Stoney Creek in three games 25-17, 25-22, and 25-22 on Tuesday night. Lake Orion better be careful to not look past Bloomfield Hills toward next week with Clarkston. We’ll see what happens.

Thoughts around the League:

Lake Orion and Clarkston look like the team’s to beat in the Red this year because of their big time star players (Lake Orion: Murdock, Giwa, Rockey, Marshall, Suciu, Shinouskis, Hargraves. Clarkston: Frakes, Dellinger, Chadwell.) The Wolves only took 58 minutes to beat the Troy Colts in three games while the Dragons took and hour and five minutes to take care of North Farmington in three games. When Lake Orion and Clarkston play each other the average time is over two hours long and it wouldn’t surprise anyone if it went five games yet again on Tuesday night.

Oxford struggled early on and recently Darien Bandell, the team’s top player committed to Oakland had 24 kills in the game against Birmingham Seaholm in a four game match. The Wildcats since entering league play has been improving lately and beat two quality teams in Bloomfield Hills and Birmingham Seaholm. I’ll be curious when they play Lake Orion and Clarkston to see what type of team they are and if anyone takes Bandell out of the game than Oxford is in big trouble and coach Kristi McDervitt knows that.

Birmingham Seaholm looks like they are improving a bit with a young core for Coach Heather Lippert with a 1-1 record in the Red but did lose a four game set to Oxford tonight. The Maples have only four seniors on a team that went to the State Quarterfinals last season and there is a lot of time to improve between now and the postseason.

Bloomfield Hills bounced back tonight against Stoney Creek and is 1-1 on the campaign. The Blackhawks were led by their bigs up front and solid backcourt but defensibly could be a liability. They allowed 44 points in the last two matches which is an alarming stat.

Troy, Stoney Creek, and North Farmington are all 0-2 in the league but all three teams have either injury problems or a lack of experience in the league.

The Cougars will be fine and should get some wins in league. Stoney Creek's league schedule is brutal with having to play Utica Eisenhower in non league and then Lake Orion, Bloomfield Hills, and now they get to go to Clarkston on Thursday in a pre district preview because Stoney Creek drew the Wolves in the first round at Clarkston. Talk about brutal.  

The Raiders are very young and inexperienced but have some nice peaces to work with. It could be a long year for Coach Jessica Concedi and her team though and an alarming stat here is that North Farmington against Clarkston and Lake Orion has had single point games this season (Clarkston-eight, Lake Orion-two.) That has to change if the Raiders want to compete this season. 

The Colts are a much different team without their top hitter Olivia Parks who is out for the season to a torn ACL and have struggled to find consistency this season but for coach Vince Muscatt, he wants to see his team compete. They still have a shot in districts when you look at it even though Avondale and Troy Athens look like the teams to beat and you can't count out the Waterford schools (Waterford Kettering and Waterford Mott.)

We’ll see what happens Thursday everyone. The match ups are interesting to say the least. Lake Orion at Bloomfield Hills, Stoney Creek at Clarkston, Troy at Oxford, and Birmingham Seaholm at North Farmington, talk about interesting.