Avoiding another five-set match was right next to winning on the South Whidbey volleyball team’s priority list Tuesday night.

Early, it seemed it might not go the Falcons’ way. South Whidbey corrected its course after quickly losing the first set, and went on to win 15-25, 25-19, 25-16, 25-20 over Lakewood.

“We just weren’t fired up,” said Falcon senior Anne Madsen, who had team highs of 15 kills and 19 digs with three aces — a quarter of the team’s total 12 serving aces. “We were a little bit frazzled. But we came back together and showed how South Whidbey plays.”

“We knew we didn’t want to go to five sets,” she added.

Exactly which rotation and lineup works is still a matter of tinkering for Falcon head coach Mandy Jones. South Whidbey’s six starters were not the same closers, with junior Morgan Davis and sophomore Kacie Hanson on the floor with seniors Abby Hodson and Madsen, and junior setter Katherine Read and junior libero Sara Bryant.

“I think we finally found a set rotation to close the game,” Madsen said.

Bryant, usually relegated to the last line of defense, saw an increased role in the offense. She played behind all-league liberos in previous seasons and saw limited court time with the varsity squad. Jones said she developed a pair of plays designed solely for Bryant, who recorded five kills from the back row against Lakewood (2-4 Cascade Conference; 2-4 overall).

“It’s something I had to look at because she’s such a strong hitter,” Jones said of her libero.

Bryant was integral in the Falcons’ defense. After losing the first set, largely on the heavy hand of Lakewood senior Katie Anderson, who scored a game-high 21 kills and added 10 digs, Jones moved Bryant to the left corner to dig Anderson’s shots.

It worked. The Falcons went from having little offense in the first set – only scoring five kills – to jumpstarting their plays to victory.

Lakewood put up quite the fight in the fourth set. The Cougars roared back from a 14-9 deficit to force a 16-16 tie. Both teams never pulled away much until South Whidbey (2-4 Cascade Conference; 3-4 overall) recovered from a pair of mistakes and tied again at 19-19 on a deep tip to the corner by Hanson. An unlikely block from Davis put the Falcons ahead for good and kept the ball in South Whidbey’s serve for a Hanson ace. Madsen scored a kill and an ace, before Davis got a kill to push the Falcons’ lead to the brink.

On Thursday, South Whidbey handled the winless Sultan squad 25-11, 25-14, 27-25. The victory was a big one, as the Falcons need to finish atop the league’s 1A schools to secure a high seed in the District 1 tournament. Sultan dropped to 1A this year, creating four such schools in the Cascade Conference along with King’s, Cascade Christian and South Whidbey.