Cary High volleyball coach Philip Goodloe hardly had reason to be upset on Thursday night. The Imps defeated Sanderson High 3-1 to extend their season-opening record to 2-0.

All that before the school year even started.

“Overall, I thought we didn’t do bad,” he said. “There was no excuse for the first game. We just get down on ourselves, but we were able to turn it around.”

After Sanderson fell hard to Apex High two days before, the Spartans surprised Cary by coming out strong and taking the first game 25-23. Sanderson looked as if it had set the tone for the entire match as six of its first nine points were results of Cary errors. The Imps ended the first game with a total of 17 errors.

By game two, Cary started to resemble the team that Goodloe had seen two days prior in its three-game sweep of Leesville Road High. But Goodloe wasn’t eager to tell his players how to fix the situation.

After calling a timeout in the first game while Cary was behind 9-6, he let the Imps figure out how to turn things around on their own by never calling another timeout until the fourth, and final, game.

The result: The Imps’ momentum ignited and remained fueled. They took the next three games 25-14, 25-12, 25-14, and outside hitter Brittany Lysik led the way.

In the second game, Lysik had four kills, one dig, one block and one service point. In game three, she showed off her serving skills with 10 service points and four aces, and in game four she sealed the win with four kills and a block.

Not bad for a junior.

“I think we started off slow, like we did in (the Leesville) game,” Lysik said. “But we pulled it out and got our momentum in the second game, got really pumped.”

Unlike Sanderson, and most area teams, Cary maintains the style of play Goodloe is accustomed to — the one without a libero. In 2004, the NCHSAA allowed for the use of the libero, a player who can be substituted for a backcourt player at any time throughout the match. The libero is standard in college and professional volleyball, but high schools had yet to include it.

“I played volleyball when they didn’t do rally scoring and if the ball hit the net on serve it wasn’t good, and there was no such thing as libero,” he said. “I’m not a big fan of it, and my backcourt players are very good servers. The libero can’t serve, so that’s another reason why I don’t use it.”

Among his top servers is the lone senior on the team, Hillary Chiang, and junior Rebecca Barrier. Though both are defensive specialists, Goodloe has utilized their strong serving skills.