Charlotte, NC - The Johnson & Wales Charlotte Volleyball team hosted USC-Lancaster and Sandhills Community College in a tri-match on Saturday. The Wildcats fell to Lancaster in 4 sets, before rebounding to defeat Sandhills in a five set thriller.

Johnson & Wales (5-2) won the first set over Lancaster 25-23, but were unable to duplicate that success in the succeeding three sets, as the Lancers (5-8) took those 25-23, 25-22, and 26-24.

USC-Lancaster would go on to lose to Sandhills 3-1 in the afternoon's middle match.

The finale turned out to be a tight, back and forth affair between Sandhills and JWU, although it did not start that way. The Wildcats easily won the first set, 25-10 over the Flyers (2-4). Sandhills turned the tables in set 2, easily topping JWU 25-16. From that point, the match tightened considerably. After trailing early in set 3, the Wildcats rallied to take the stanza 25-23, only to see Sandhills return the favor in set 4, rallying from a 22-20 deficit to win that set 25-23 and knotting the match at 2. 

Johnson & Wales built a 6-3 lead early in the 5th, but true to form, Sandhills rallied to tie the set at 7. The Wildcats got a big kill from Kaitlin Jaromin to retake the lead, and would never trail again in route to a 15-9 win in the set, and a 3-2 win in the match.

Demya Scott had 16 kills in the match, while Emily Arends added 13 more to go with 17 digs and 3 service aces. Logan Smith tallied 19 assists and Niecee Perofeta had 16. Lynasia Felder led the team with 38 digs in the match, while Jaromin added 4 solo blocks.

Coach Phillips likes the direction that the team is heading in. "We took one win and one loss like everyone else in this tri-match, but I'm very pleased with our level of play today overall. We made some adjustments and showed some necessary improvements, and the identity of our team is really starting to show through. I'm excited to continue working hard with this group."

Johnson & Wales hosts Ferrum in their next match Tuesday at 7pm.