CARNEY — The Stephenson volleyball team couldn’t find a way to match the intensity of the Carney-Nadeau squad in Tuesday’s Skyline Central Conference showdown as the Wolves completed a 3-0 sweep of the Lady Eagles.

“We came out flat and (C-N) was ready to play,” Stephenson coach Sara Johnson said. “It’s disappointing because this is one we really wanted win, but if we didn’t win we at least wanted to put up a fight and we just weren’t ready tonight.”

Using some help from the flat start coach Johnson talked about, C-N jumped out to a 12-4 lead on an ace from Hailey Ernest.

The Wolves biggest lead of the night in any game came later in the first when they went up 20-8 before Stephenson woke up and started to make a comeback.

With the score at 21-11, Paige Cappaert went on an 8-point service run that included four aces to cut the deficit to 21-19 before the Lady Eagles run was ended on a shot into the net giving possession back to C-N with the score at 22-19.

“I knew we had that (run) in us and I was just waiting for it to happen,” Johnson said. “We couldn’t pass to begin the game. Thankfully Paige had a nice run in that first game and it was kind of a light at the end of the tunnel for us that we could do this, just couldn’t finish.”

Stephenson scored one more point in the match before a kill from Taylor Kedsch and a block from Ernest sealed the Game 1 win for C-N, 25-20.

(Stephenson) is a good team and we know they have the ability to come back at us at anytime,” Wolves coach Steve Kedsch said. “They got some momentum going and they’re tough to stop when that happens. We got fortunate they hit one into the net and we took advantage.”

The second game stayed close throughout with Stephenson grabbing the biggest lead early on at 12-7 on a kill from Makayla Johnson.

After C-N scored the next point, Zoey Poupore went on a 3-point service run to get within one at 12-11 but a kill from Stephenson’s Emily Johnson gave control back to the Lady Eagles.

Trailing 15-12, the Wolves stormed back to tie the game at 16 and went on a 9-3 scoring run to end the game, capped off by a kill from Sandra Boulton to take Game 2 by a score of 25-19.

With their backs against the wall in Game 3, the Lady Eagles stayed neck-and-neck with C-N, trading points until the game was tied at 9.

C-N scored the next four points on a kill and a block by Boulton and another kill from Blahnik that forced Stephenson into a timeout to talk things over.

Out of the timeout, Boulton tallied another kill before Cappaert blocked a kill attempt to give the ball back to Stephenson, but not before the Wolves lead grew to 15-10.

The game went back-and-forth towards the end until a kill from Boulton made the score 24-17 and the game ended when Stephenson failed to hit it over the net.

In total for the game, C-N had 34 kills led by 12 from Kedsch and nine each by Boulton and Blahnik.

“We have three girls that can hit the ball real well and our setters do a good job of getting the ball to them whenever they can,” Kedsch said. “Hopefully as the season goes on we can get a couple other girls to step up so we can start to spread it around a bit more.”

Ernest led the team in assists with 19 and added 10 digs and Jules Thoune had 11 assists and four digs; Kedsch added 10 digs Blahnik led the team with three aces.

For Stephenson, Zoe Chaney had eight assists and Emily Johnson had six and three kills; Makayla Johnson had seven kills and Cappaert had two and Justine Havelka had 13 digs.

“I expect a lot more from a few of the girls on the team and hopefully this was kind of a wake-up call for us,” coach Johnson said. “We were a step slow on everything tonight. Our defense didn’t adjust the way we needed to and with the way (C-N) hits the ball it was too much for us. We just didn’t have any fight and that’s unusual for our team. Hopefully we can fix the issues and regroup for the rest of the season.”