CARY — Coming off its first loss of the year, the Cary High volleyball team was perhaps too jazzed up to play host to Holly Springs on Thursday. Early in the match, Lady Imp players could be seen running into each other, hitting balls too long and too wide and were seemingly moving almost too fast than was necessary.

But once coach Philip Goodloe’s team settled in, Cary won the match 3-1, taking each of the final two matches.

“In the first game, we were nervous and uptight,” Imp senior Caroline Salevan said. “And I think after our first timeout, [coach] Goodloe had a really good talk and settled us down a little … we were coming off a game with Apex, which was tough for us. We went in expecting it to be harder and we were too aggressive.”

The Imps (3-1, 2-1) didn’t so much win as they did survive an error-filled first game by the 25-19 score. The miscues continued in the second, as Holly Springs mounted a late comeback, reeling off the last nine points in game two to win 25-20.

“It was ugly,” Goodloe said. “[Holly Springs is] a scrappy team and we let them play scrappy instead of putting points away when we should.”

In the third game, Cary finally cleaned some of the mistakes from the first two and won by a convincing 25-17. The good play continued into the fourth, where the Imps withstood a Holly Springs effort to win 25-23 and clinch the match.

Players said Goodloe helped calm them down after they found themselves trying too hard and communicating too little.

“We weren’t going for every ball and [coach] told us to talk out there. And then we started to get it back a little,” junior Alie Endres said.

The Imps don’t have a single player listed at six-foot or taller, with the tallest being listed at 5-9. That would’ve been good enough for about fifth-tallest on a lanky Holly Springs (2-3, 1-2) team. However, size didn’t seem to matter when it came to the Cary attack.

“I have the only team in the state that is under six-feet tall,” Goodloe said, with some added hyperbole. “The only thing you can do is to be very quick and have good defense. We keep our sets low so we can get an attack going before they can set their blockers up.”

Salevan, one of the senior leaders on the team, said her team’s effort has to compensate for their lack of height.

“We go after the ball very hard and we like to hit the ball off the block,” Salevan said. “Our team is all defense so we’re very good at covering, getting balls up – we’re very scrappy because we can’t kill it down all the time.”

Just three games into the school’s first year in the Tri-Nine Conference, Holly Springs coach Jennifer Ivenhoff said she’s noticed the difference in competition. Although Holly Springs won the Greater Neuse Conference last year, Ivenhoff said the Tri-Nine has proven to be more difficult.

“It’s been competitive, which is something we need for our program,” Ivenhoff said. “We’re still adjusting to the big change from going from our previous conference to the Tri-Nine.”

She also said her team will focus on serving in the coming weeks. The Golden Hawks had three service errors in the game's final five points.

“Our serving is one thing we need to work on to improve. We’ll be ready for them next time,” “We’re learning from it all.”