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By James A. McCray III
Prince George's County, Content Manager
Open your remote control and there they are -- batteries. As you take pictures with your digital camera, there are batteries present allowing you to take every snapshot.
Walk into the Eleanor Roosevelt gym while a volleyball game is taking place, and there they are, Roosevelt's own "battery."
In Wednesday night's 4A South regional semi-final contest against the visiting C.H. Flowers Jaguars, Roosevelt's Funmi Akinyode totaled 21 kills as teammate Mercedes Maynard totaled 15 assists in the 25-14, 25-13, 27-25, 25-15 victory to improve to 16-0 and advance to the 4A South regional title game.
"Mercedes and Funmi are quite a little battery," Roosevelt head coach Eileen Lloyd said. "They can really power up."
Power up the Raiders did as Maynard's serves were often put away by Akinyode.
"We came in here and knew it would be a very important game," Akinyode said. "We played Flowers before and they are one of the best in the county."
Roosevelt jumped out to an early 2-0 lead as Akinyode put away eight shots in the first two games, four in each, and Maynard added five kills and five assists between the two games.
However, Flowers (11-5) found the energy to come away with a 27-25 victory in the third game. And despite its efforts for a complete comeback fell short, and its season being over, head coach Byron Ware is very pleased about the team's performance this season.
"We played well at times, but we really didn't step up when we needed to," Ware said. " ... We are young and I thought we were going to just be over .500. I am pleased and surprised that we did as well as we did this year. I am proud of them ... and I definitely can't complain."
As far as the game three loss, Maynard added: "The first two games we had a lot of intensity. [In] the third game we kind of slacked a little bit, but we picked it back up in the fourth game."
"We just got flat, couldn't pass the ball, couldn't serve very well, and that is the key to the game, serving and passing," Lloyd continued. "They played [games] one and two really strong, but three, I don't know.
"[Flowers] really hustled a lot more. I thought they were a little feistier in the third game themselves. ... They did some things well and made us have to play the ball."
Akinyode exploded for eight kills in the fourth and deciding game and indeed helped power Roosevelt past Flowers.
"They are just really into each other, and into the game," Lloyd said. "They do what the need to do, they work hard and that's [the key to success]."
Roosevelt will host the 4A South regional championship game Friday at 6 p.m.
tmccray@digitalsports.com
Eleanor Roosevelt 3, C.H. Flowers 1
C.H. Flowers -- 14 13 27 15
Roosevelt -- 25 25 25 25