BERNIE -- The Bernie volleyball team hasn't always been a model of consistency this season. And on Tuesday, the Mules looked like two different teams.
After cruising in the opening set, then struggling to find its rhythm in Game 2, Bernie overcame its inconsistency woes, beating Twin Rivers 25-7, 22-25, 25-12 to snap the Royals' six-match win streak.
"We're just still trying to find that right balance of becoming a consistent team in all phases of the game," Bernie coach Jason Long said. "After playing really well in the first set the hitting errors in the second hurt us and I was curious how they'd respond. With where we're at and what we're trying to do, we showed we can make improvements and we were happy to get the win."
Bernie (8-7-1), which won its fifth straight match, never trailed in the opening set.
Cymber Arnold, the junior who finished with a game-high 19 kills, was there with a thunderous swat each time the Royals mounted a small rally, including a kill that put the Mules up 7-1 to keep her team in the driver's seat.
"She's someone that we look to," Long said of Arnold. "She's capable, she's talented and that's the kind of production we need out of her."
Twin Rivers got the next two points on a tip from Brooke Blume and a block by Katelyn South before consecutive errors and an Arnold kill put the Royals in a 12-3 hole.
Out of a timeout, Twin Rivers caught a brief break when Blume came up with another kill, but by the time the Royals got their next point they were down 23-6.
South, who finished with four kills, two aces and 21 digs, got one more kill and an ace before Bernie libero Taylor Lovelady ended the opening set with an ace.
"I consider Bernie to be a very fast-paced team that plays the kind of tough teams that we don't get to play," Twin Rivers coach Whitney Stanford said. "We knew it'd be hard to get those kinks worked out against them and it was."
Bernie had to work out its own kinks in a second-set loss where mistakes were common. Hits sailed out of bounds and against the net while serves did the same.
The Mules missed five serves in the second set alone and hit plenty more shots out of bounds.
Sensing their struggles, the Royals -- led by Blume, South and Hannah Finley -- went on the attack.
One of Blume's seven kills tied the game at 3-all, then a block by 5-9 senior, South, pushed the Royals ahead for good at 6-5.
Bernie hit the next ball into the net and had to burn a timeout, but managed to stay within five points the rest of the way.
A Twin Rivers error pulled the lead back down to one before Finley's block pushed it to 8-6. The teams traded the next three points before the Royals found some breathing room after consecutive Bernie errors for an 11-8 advantage.
South's second ace of the night sent the Royals on an 8-6 run capped by a Bernie error to give Twin Rivers its largest lead at 19-14.
The Mules had three straight errors leading up to that point before Long had to burn another timeout.
"All year long those have basically put us behind the eight ball," Long said.
Arnold came up with big kills out of the break as the Mules and Royals traded the next five points.
Another kill from Arnold and a tip for a kill off the fingertips of Madison Wooldridge, who had three assists and three kills, trimmed the deficit to 22-19.
Bernie hit its next serve long as did Twin Rivers before Wooldridge's block pulled the Mules within 22-21. But that was as close as they got.
Bernie had two more errors before Hannah Phillips' ace finished out the second set to tie things up.
"The girls are really big on this prayer chant that they do which says 'day by day we get better and better until we can't be beat and won't be beat,'" Stanford said. "I pretty much told them if they couldn't play according to the words of their prayer chant, I wasn't going to allow them to say it anymore and it sparked something."
Bernie didn't mess around in the decisive set, jumping out to 9-0 lead and never looking back.
Arnold came up with her fourth kill of the set before the Royals, who hit four balls out of bounds up to that point, even got on the board.
Twin Rivers leveled things out in the middle of the set before aiding the Mules with three straight errors that allowed them to take their largest lead up to that point at 21-10. Wooldridge and Ryleigh Foster then combined on a block to send Bernie on a match-ending 4-1 run capped by Foster's ace.
"I honestly put the third game on us," Stanford said. "We missed too many serves, we hit a lot out of bounds. It was just an off game which would've been OK had we started this match out on the right foot."