Free State middle blockers Chantay Caron, left, and Taylor Manning, right, attempt to block a shot from Shawnee Mission West's Laura Murphy.

From left, senior Brooke Carter, senior Melanie Chaussee, senior Kelsey Allen, junior Taylor Manning, junior Danielle Augustine and other FSHS volleyball players celebrate scoring a point against Shawnee Mission West on Thursday, Sept. 20, 2007 at FSHS.

Free State senior Brooke Carter swears she doesn’t spend extra time working on her serving, but watching her in action Thursday night at Free State High, you might have thought otherwise.

On two separate occasions during Thursday night’s triangular – in back-to-back games, no less – Carter reeled off serving runs of 10 or more points to lead the fourth-ranked Firebirds to a pair of action-packed victories over Olathe South and Shawnee Mission West.

“The big thing for me is confidence,” Carter said. “I have to go back there knowing that I’m going to get the ball in. But I can’t take all of the credit. The girls up front did an awesome job to keep me back there. It was a total team effort tonight.”

After knocking off Shawnee Mission West in the opening match of the night – 27-25, 26-28, 25-18 – Free State found itself down a game to Olathe South after a sloppy, 25-18 loss in the nightcap.

That’s when Carter made her move. With the score knotted at four in Game Two, she reeled off 10 straight serves, propelling Free State to a 14-4 lead and an easy, 25-12 victory.

In the deciding game, Carter was even more impressive. With her team reeling, and trailing 17-11, she took the ball to the back line and didn’t give it up until the Firebirds were ahead, 23-17. What was amazing about Carter’s second serving run was that she dug nearly every ball during the 12-point run.

While Carter and libero Alyx Glover held down the back row, Free State’s power players bombed away at the net.

Junior Taylor Manning, who had a team-high six kills in the final game, recorded four during the decisive stretch. Senior Melanie Chaussee also came alive during the run, delivering two kills and two blocks of her own.

After Carter took the Firebirds to 23, Chaussee and Manning brought them home. As Olathe South began to show signs of life, Chaussee unleashed one of her nasty cut shots to push the lead to 24-20. The game ended two points later when Manning ripped a ball into a double block at the net.

“That win really proves what we can do if we focus and play like we want to win all the time,” Manning said.

In the opener, Free State saw two of its three matches against Shawnee Mission West go to overtime.

The Firebirds defeated the Vikings in Game One, 27-25, when Danielle Augustine and Chaussee put together back-to-back points with the game on the line. Appropriately, Carter served on both of them.

In Game Two, the Firebirds let one get away. Despite leading throughout, and as deep in as 16-12 and 21-18, Free State had no answer for West’s Brit Bahr. Bahr scored six of the Vikings’ final eight points in the second game by simply powering her swings through the Free State block attempts.

Disgusted by their letdown in Game Two, the Firebirds regrouped before Game Three.

“We were definitely really focused at that point,” said Augustine, who led all Firebirds with 11 kills in the SM West match. “We don’t like to get in those positions, and we wanted to make sure we made up for it in the third game.”

That they did, disposing of SM West, 25-19.

For the night, the Firebirds had four players in double figures in kills. Manning led with 17, while Chaussee added 13, Augustine chipped in 12 and Chantay Caron finished with 11.

Free State’s next action comes Saturday in Topeka, when the Firebirds (11-2) travel to the Seaman Invitational.