Only one game into the 2025 season, the Santa Fe Raiders volleyball team already has some adversity to deal with.

But in their first home game of the season, they had more than enough to get past the two-time defending Rural state runner-up Branford Buccaneers.

Senior Delaney Wingenbach paced the Raiders with 21 kills and Santa Fe bounced back from a tough third set to beat Branford, 3-1 (25-22, 25-15, 21-25, 25-16).

Santa Fe, which won its opener at Columbia last week, improves to 2-0. But it hasn’t all been good news for the Raiders.

Santa Fe found out over the weekend that they will be without senior outside hitter Emarie Carlisle for 4-6 weeks with a broken wrist.

“We lost her (Carlisle) on Saturday and hadn’t been able to practice with another outside hitter, so we used a few of them tonight,” Santa Fe coach Eric Marshall said. “We have athletes, and we need to figure that out, but we won’t be able to practice until Wednesday.”

Santa Fe took a 7-2 lead in the opening set, but Branford (2-2) came back to tie three times, the last at 12-12. Branford hung within one point on a couple of occasions, but Santa Fe held on.

The second set was dominated by the Raiders, who scored the first five points and led 8-1. Branford cut the deficit to 12-9, but Santa Fe continued to pull away to go up 2-0.

“Midway through the second set, I thought we got more comfortable,” Marshall said. “The biggest thing to get adjusted to is to block and we haven’t practiced that a lot because the right side is totally different from the outside.”

Branford didn’t go quietly, though. The Bucs pulled away from a 15-15 tie with four straight points and held on to win the third set.

“They (Branford) got some confidence in the third set, and I can say they are a talented team, and they never panicked against us,” Marshall said.

But Santa Fe put the game away in the fourth set, scoring the first eight points and cruising from there.

“I thought the key tonight was Delaney (Wingenbach) was unstoppable,” Marshall said. “We started serving better in the second and fourth sets as well.”

Senior Brooke Findley added 16 kills and 15 digs and freshman Ajah Graddy had 10 kills. Junior Karlee Noah led Santa Fe with 24 digs, and senior Gracyn Marshall chipped in with 25 assists, 22 service points and four aces. Junior Ella Schneider added 20 assists.

On Tuesday, Branford is at Bell while Santa Fe will play at Buchholz.

“We aren’t very good right now and definitely have work to do,” Marshall said. “Buchholz will be a good test for us.”