Woodstock North had every reason to be fired up Monday.

But the Thunder were the opposite of that.

“They were excited, but they were pretty calm,” first-year coach Rebekah Sellek said of her team’s matchup against Richmond-Burton. “Like the calmness kind of scared me a little bit. There wasn’t the amped up, aggressive, we’re going to do this kind of thing.

“But I think that’s what we needed though, the calm.”

Calm but confident North was up to the challenge Monday against an R-B team with 32 straight victories in KRC play.

The Thunder coasted in the first set and went on to sweep the Rockets 25-15, 25-22 to take sole possession of first place in the KRC.

Sophomore outside hitter Ava Kardaras, in her first match back after suffering a concussion, led North (7-3, 4-0 KRC) with nine kills, including both set winners.

The 5-foot-9 Kardaras stretched out for a kill to close out the first set and zipped the match winner past the block of Reagan Wisniewski and Zoe Freund to send the Thunder to their first win over the Rockets (10-3, 4-1) since Oct. 11, 2022.

“I know I’ve only been here two years, but knowing the history with Richmond, it’s the game where we’re all like, ‘I need to win this,’” Kardaras said. “We’re a smaller team, we’re not 6-4 and all that, but if we work together, it’s like we’re a big team. With all of us together, we can win anything.”

Senior setter Gabby Schefke finished with 17 assists, two kills and one block, senior libero Maddie Sofie had 12 digs and a kill, and junior outside hitter Jenna Johnson tallied six kills, including three in a row in the second set to give the Thunder an 18-15 lead.

Also for North, junior Tayler Menzel posted nine digs, four kills, two blocks and two aces, while junior Kayla Smiley chipped in six digs and one ace.

North won three straight KRC titles from 2020 to 2022, but the past two seasons everybody in the conference has been looking up to the Rockets, who went 28-0 combined in 2023 and 2024. R-B didn’t drop even drop a set in the KRC last fall.

The Thunder kept Coastal Carolina commit Dani Hopp, a junior, in check with seven kills, while the Rockets other top attacker Sophia Komar, a senior, added four kills. Senior Daniella Mazzola posted four blocks and sophomore Addy Woods had seven assists.

“We knew what they were going to bring,” Schefke said of the Rockets. “We knew they have all strong hitters in their front row. We just needed to stay calm in our back row and get a good block up against them.

“I feel really confident in our outsides [Kardaras and Johnson] and Taylor [Menzel] on the right side. Our middles were doing a great job of pulling their middle blocker by being loud and just understanding where they needed to be to get our pins one-on one.”

Richmond-Burton trailed 21-16 in the second set after a block by North’s Menzel but cut the deficit to 22-21 immediately following a block by Mazzola and Hopp’s seventh kill.

The Thunder ended the match on a 3-1 run, aided by a Rockets’ serving error and lift before Kadaras’ match-winner.

Richmond-Burton first-year coach Inger Freund felt her side came out too complacent against North.

“I feel like they’re always a threat. I know they’re a good defensive team,” Freund said of going up against North. “They’re always going to show up, and I don’t feel like we fought hard enough. I think we played it too easy, played it too safe and it took too long to get any momentum back.

“We’ve got to start off being ready to fight from point one. You can’t just expect everybody to lay down.”