The Orlando Valkyries lost 3-2 against the Atlanta Vibe Friday night at Addition Financial Arena. With the loss, the Valkyries have dropped three-straight home matches and are 1-3 overall.
“I thought it was a really good learning opportunity for our team to not have two of our captains on the floor with us for five sets Valkyries coach Amy Pauly said. “But we certainly had our opportunities to win, and that’s what we’ll take from this, is that we can continue to get better.”
The Valkyries were without reigning MLV MVP Brittany Abercrombie (foot), middle blocker Kaz Brown (back spasms) and outside hitter Charitie Luper (food poisoning).
Valkyries outside hitter Hannah Maddux led the team with a career-high 27 kills in the match, while Leah Edmond, MLV’s inaugural MVP in 2024, had 24.
“In the second set, I just kind of [rewired] my brain to be aggressive,” Maddux said. “I think not like anticipating where I think the ball is gonna go, but just going to get it. And I was like, I just need to go get it. I just need to hit the ball hard and go get it. And so that was kind of what I was was going on, the little hamster I was spinning on the wheel on my head, and that’s what I was thinking.”
Game flow
The first set was dominated by the Vibe as they led from the first point until the last. Orlando kept it close for the first 10 points of the match, but a 6-1 run gave Atlanta a large lead.
Atlanta won the set 25-18, largely due to the seven kills from Leah Edmond, who has the second-most kills in the MLV. For the Valkyries, Naya Shime led the team with five kills.
“We saw Brittany was out in a boot,” Vibe coach Kayla Banwarth said. “First of all, I hope I wish her a speedy recovery. And second of all, I knew that didn’t change how hard this match was gonna be. I think really highly of Naya Shime, and I knew she was gonna be a handful, which she was.”
Orlando would bounce back in the second set, as after taking a 5-4 lead early in the set, the team would hold the lead until the end. Maddux led Orlando with five kills in the set, while Raven Colvin and Edmond tied with three.
Part of the Valkyries’ early success was Natalie Foster, as she collected two back-to-back aces to increase her MLV lead.
“I think overall, [Foster] is really important,” Pauly said. “She does have to keep getting her overall point scoring up, and so she knows that. She knows she’s gotta get a couple more balls down when she’s going through the front row, but, yeah, the confidence that she has when she goes back to the service line, she’s gotta start having when she’s in the front row. a little bit more. But she’s a rallyer for our team, and everybody knows that when she goes back there, she can rip it, and every time. We don’t care if she misses. Like, we love that she goes after it, and she gets aggressive, and she really can kind of bring the momentum back in our direction.”
Coming out of halftime knotted at 1-1, Orlando came out with an early lead, as Foster added her fourth ace of the match. Atlanta would then go on a 9-1 run, including three points from Edmond.
The Valkyries responded with a 4-0 run to cut the lead to three, but a 3-0 run by the Vibe secured their set win. Edmond led Atlanta with four kills, with Maddux leading the set with seven.
Down by a set, the Valkyries needed to rally for a chance at victory. The set saw 13 ties and 14 lead changes, but a 10-3 run by Orlando sealed the set win and sent the match into overtime.
Maddux led the set in kills for the third set in a row with nine, with Edmond trailing at five kills. Maddux’s mark is second for most kills in a set for a Valkyries player in franchise history.
In the final set, Atlanta’s resilience showed, as the Vibe went on a 6-0 run early in the set. The Vibe would carry that momentum for the rest of the match, winning the set 15-9.
Atlanta boasted a .600 hitting percentage in the frame, while Orlando had a .188 mark. Until the last third of the set, the Valkyries had a negative hitting percentage.
“I just told him that we’ve gotta keep finding our identity,” Pauly said. “I think that we do things really high and right now really low, and, again, some of that is lack of focus or just getting in some slumps and not having the confidence to go back out there and swing tough. And we’re learning that about ourselves. I’d much rather be learning that now than late in March.”
Next up
The Valkyries will host the Omaha Supernovas on Sunday. Orlando is 1-0 against the Supernovas this season after a 3-2 victory in Omaha in January.
“We’re identifying what the problem is, but we’ve got to face it headfirst and go, ‘I’ve got to be better at this, and I’ve got to be better at that’ so that the team can be better than hopefully, you know, that can click on Sunday,” Pauly said. “And for some reason when we’re on the road, we’ve been really good at it. So now we just gotta get the home environment rolling a little bit more.”
First serve against the Supernovas is set for 3 p.m. on Feb. 8.