It tells you how well the Free State volleyball team played Thursday night when the only time coach Nancy Hopkins was upset was when she misplaced her Coke bottle during the match.

Free State Setter Aubrey Morris bumps the ball. The Firebirds swept a quad Thursday at FSHS.

The Firebirds went 3-0 in the home quadrangular, only losing one of the seven games they played. After going 1-3 over the weekend, Hopkins was pleased with the way her team responded Thursday.

“It’s good to win three league games,” Hopkins said. “We didn’t play very well this past weekend, and we worked on a lot of things, and it looks like we worked on the right things based on how we played tonight. It feels good.”

In their third match of the evening, the Firebirds trailed Shawnee Mission Northwest, 20-24, in the first game before a tip by setter Aubrey Morris kept the Firebirds alive at 21-24. After two more points brought them to 23-24, senior Kelly Jewell fired two straight kills to give Free State a 25-24 lead. An ace by Brooke Carter capped a 6-0 run for Free State and gave it a dramatic 26-24 victory.

“We kept battling and were able to pull it off,” said Jewell, who had 16 kills and seven blocks on the night. “That gave us a lot of momentum, which carried over to the next game.”

In game two, Free State jumped out to a 17-4 lead. Hopkins said her team could feel the momentum switch after the comeback in game one.

“On the bench, all of our coaches looked at each other and said, ‘Can you say momentum change?'” Hopkins said. “Volleyball is a game of momentum, and if you can string a whole bunch of points together, you’re going to win the game.”

The Firebirds closed out the game and Shawnee Mission Northwest, 25-14. Last season, they were knocked off by Northwest four times, a point emphasized before the match.

• 6Sports video: Free State wins home quad (09-15-05)

“We knew that they had beaten us four times last year,” said Kelsey Harrison, who had 19 kills on the night. “We definitely didn’t want to lose to them again.”

In the opening match of the quadrangular, Free State swept Blue Valley Northwest by identical scores of 25-16, 25-16. In game one, the Firebirds trailed 11-13 before running off an 8-0 run to take control of the game, 19-13. They put a 6-3 run together to finish off the game.

Free State's Brooke Carter gets a high-five from her coach after a successful hit during the Firebirds' first match. FSHS swept a quadrangular on Thursday at Free State.

“We were just trying to swing multiple points together instead of trading points back and forth,” Hopkins said. “That was something that we had a lot of problems with over the weekend when we didn’t play very well.”

In its other match, Free State defeated Shawnee Mission South in three games, 25-20, 22-25, 25-18.

After their poor performance last weekend, strong passing was the difference for the Firebirds on Thursday.

“We passed the ball a lot better tonight,” Harrison said. “We worked on it a lot in practice and it showed.”

Free State will be in action again Thursday when it travels to Shawnee Mission West for a quadrangular at 5 p.m.