By ALEC ETHEREDGE | Sports Editor

CHELSEA – Last week was a good one for the Chelsea Hornets, but what plagued them last year showed a slight glimpse of return in 2018 with their only loss during a 7-1 week coming to area opponent Helena.

It wasn’t a bad loss for an extremely good Chelsea team as they fell to a senior-laden Helena team that is one of the best in the state, but the region loss stung nonetheless.

Just a few days later, after winning five consecutive matches over the weekend, the Hornets were back at it with another big area match against Calera on Tuesday, Sept. 18, and this time there was no messing around.

Chelsea came out of the gates and dominated from start to finish in a 3-0 sweep of the Eagles that evened the Hornets area record at 1-1.

The Hornets didn’t allow the Eagles to score more than 12 points in any set, giving them wins by at least 13 points in each of the three sets played during the match, and it started in the first set with their most dominant win of any set.

Chelsea jumped all over Calera in that first set and never looked back on its way to a 15-point 25-10 win to start the match.

With that momentum, it was going to be extremely difficult for Calera to bounce back with enough confidence to pull off the comeback and it showed in the second set when the Hornets picked up another strong win giving up just two more points than the previous set in a 25-12 set win.

Now up 2-0 in the match, Chelsea put Calera in a situation where the Eagles needed to win three consecutive sets in a row to pull off the upset, but the Hornets weren’t going to let any momentum slip away in this one.

They came out in the third set and followed suit with another 25-12 victory to close out the match and claim a 3-0 sweep.

Through five weeks of the 2018 season, the Hornets have been an extremely busy team and already have a record of 20-4 overall this season and have now won six consecutive matches.

It’s a team that placed an emphasis on winning region matchups this season, and with games against Pelham twice, Helena once and Calera once still remaining on the schedule, the Hornets will have a chance to gain plenty of momentum heading into the area tournament at the end of October.