Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

STANFORD — In its first home match of the season, the Lincoln County High School volleyball team swept local rival Casey County 3-0 in the J.C. Eddleman Gymnasium.

The Lady Patriots, who opened with a 3-2 win at Somerset Monday, had a close call in the first set Tuesday before pulling out a 25-23 win then took the next two sets 25-13, 25-16 to improve to 2-0.

Lincoln was led by senior Peyton Griffin who tallied three aces, five kills, six digs and five assists on the night. Emery Bertram added four kills, four digs and two assists, Kaylynn Smith added three aces and 10 kills, Kaylie Cotter had two aces and eight digs, Alyssa Salyers had four kills and one block, Jada Whited had four kills, Kasie Mullins, three blocks, and Sarah Beth Grimes helped with 20 assists.

“It’s our second game, first home game. We saw some kinks to work out but they’re looking pretty good this early on,” Lincoln coach Samantha Torres said.

One of those “kinks” Torres pinpointed was in the Lady Patriots’ serving game. The team had 15 serving errors in Tuesday’s win.

“We’ve got to work out some serving issues,” Torres said. “We had a lot of serving errors and we had a lot of serving errors last night. I think it’s a mental thing for them. I think they get psyched out when they’ve missed so many and so they are stressing out on that. We are definitely going to work on that tomorrow in practice.”

A large number of Lincoln’s service errors came in the first set. Casey (0-2) also struggled serving in the opening set.

“We did not hold onto the ball. It was just back and forth between us,” said Torres.

The Lady Patriots began the first set down 1-6 before going on an 8-2 run to go on top 9-8. Casey would tie the score on a sideout but Lincoln quickly got the ball back and edged out to an 11-9 lead. The Lady Patriots survived a back-and-forth battle over the remainder of the set to pull out the 25-23 win.

Lincoln fell behind early in both the second and third sets of the match before notching wins.

The Lady Patriots trailed only once, 0-1, in the first set, with the opening serve into the net costing the team a point. After trading net serves with Casey, Lincoln gradually pulled away from the Lady Rebels to take the set 25-13.

Casey held the first series of leads in set three and was up 6-4 before Lincoln came back to take the lead. Griffin took over service and she proceeded to serve up four straight points to put Lincoln up 9-6 and set the team on course for the win. The Lady Pats led by as many as 10 points before posting the 25-16 victory.

Torres says she expects the Lady Patriot volleyball team to continue to improve as players adjust to their roles on the team.

“We lost eight last year and they’d been varsity for a long time. They are definitely ready to fill those spots,” she said of her new team. “They are working hard and they’re doing a pretty good job of filling the spots.”

Lincoln will be at home for its next two games, playing host to Southwestern today and Garrard County on Monday. The freshman/jv/varsity tripleheaders start at 5:30 p.m.