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Paced by the attack of Silvia Sartori the Lee volleyball team claimed a 3-1 victory over Gulf South Conference foe Mississippi College on Saturday afternoon from Walker Arena.

The red-shirt freshman Sartori, tallied a match-high 16 kills on a .250 hitting percentage to go along with six blocks. Sartori now has 170 kills and 109 digs on the season. Junior Catherine Conley and freshman Emily Bento chipped nine slams each. Hillary Hoffpauir and Haley Foote split time at the setter position and finished with 17 assists each.

The Lady Flames (8-7, 4-6) stumbled out of the gate falling to the Choctaws (2-16, 1-9) 25-19 in set one. "Same old story in the first set as we just come out shooting ourselves in the foot. We had 14 unforced errors in the first set," said head coach Andrea Hudson.

Lee cleaned things up in the final three sets to pull out the home victory (25-17, 25-18, 25-17). As a team the Lady Flames fired 53 kills and committed 19 errors on 143 total attacks (.238). 

"We talked about this team likes to set the ball really tight in the zone so there was no reason for us not to be blocking more balls in the second set," Hudson noted. "Finally in third set we really started defending the ball at the net." 

Junior Emily Philpott led the defensive effort at the net with eight blocks and Sartori added six. Senior Stephanie Hernandez recorded 17 digs.

When asked about play the play of Bento and her other freshman Hudson noted, "We don't give them a break in practice we ride them just like the upperclassmen. These freshmen expect to play well and their confidence is growing. I think having a lot of these back and forth matches has helped us improve."

Mississippi College was led by Jenna Campbell with nine kills and Jamie Biglow with eight. Bailee Berringer set things up with 21 assists and Madison Kimes added a match-high 21 digs.

The Lady Flames will step outside of conference play next week and travel to Atlanta, Ga. to play Emory University on Tuesday evening. Lee will then head to Carrollton, Ga. to play in the NCAA D2 South Region Crossover Tournament.

The crossover will be hosted by West Georgia and feature teams from the Gulf South playing clubs from the Sunshine State Conference. The schedule as not yet been released and will matchup the two conferences based on their current standings.

"Emory is ranked No. 3 in Division III. They get to the final four every year and I like that we will play them before we play in the Crossover Tournament next weekend," concluded Hudson.