Rangely takes 3-2 win at Vail Friday

RANGELY I Jimmie Mergel-man figured Friday’s match at Vail Christian would be a challenge. She was right.
And the Lady Panthers were up to the challenge.
“I knew it would be tough,” the Rangely volleyball coach said. “They are a good team. They are going to surprise a lot of people, I think.
But Vail Christian — the defending Western Slope League champs — didn’t surprise Rangely. The Lady Panthers won in five games.
Rangely won the first game 25-17, lost the second 25-21, won the third 25-13, lost the fourth 25-23, and won the decisive fifth game 15-11.
“I thought we played all right,” Mergelman said. “There’s still room for improvement. We missed some serves. We made some errors we shouldn’t have made. Game two was probably our worst game and we only lost by four. Games one and three we had minimal errors. In game three we only had three errors. That was huge, and we only had six in game one.”
The senior-dominated Lady Panthers have just two underclassmen in the starting lineup — sophomore Brittany Babineaux and junior Haeley Enterline. The rest are seniors, including team captains Marie Morton, Torie Slagle and Rozilynn Thacker.
Rangely, 4-1, has just one match loss this season. That was against Grand Junction High School in the season-opening Glenwood Springs tournament.
“Junction is a big 5A school, but we should have been able to pull that one out,” Mergelman said.
Then, on Saturday, in the first home match of the season, Rangely had no trouble beating Uintah River from Fort Duchesne, Utah. The Lady Panthers won easily in three games, 25-5, 25-2 and 25-1.
This week, the Lady Panthers travel to Paonia on Friday and then will host North Park on Saturday, with the varsity starting at 2 p.m., the junior varsity 1 p.m.