Lady Savages pick up big conference win on road

The Sigourney volleyball team accomplished three notable things when they played at English Valleys on September 20. The first was going into four sets, only the second time they’d done so this season and the first against a conference opponent. The second thing they did was respond from being down and the final thing was they finished with a win, their second of the season.

Before play began, the captains came out for the coin toss to see who would get the first possession. On this one night however, there were more captains than usual with both teams having an additional two honorary captains. The four honorary captains all had battled cancer or were currently in a battle with cancer and were selected with the theme of night being “Cancer awareness”. Various posters were hung up around the gym with phrases like “No Fear” and “Together We Will Win” in addition to the Lady Bears wearing special lavender jerseys.

One of the longest rallies of the entire match came on the first point, which lasted a couple minutes with neither team finding a way to get the ball to hit the floor on the opponents’ side of the net. English Valleys managed to get through the opening point and quickly took a 7-4 lead with some quick movement and hard hitting. The home team continued to dictate the pace throughout the opening set, extending their lead to 13-5.

“It was huge for us to start off strong, especially considering the way things ended earlier in the week,” Lady Bears coach Becky Becker said. “We did some things well and kept our composure, but we have to sustain that for multiple sets. We’re still letting some teams hang around and we’re not closing out like I want to see.”

Kaylee Weber had a crucial attack at the net for the Lady Savages to end the EV rally. Sigourney put together a rally of their own with some power kills by outside hitter Sloane Magill to pull closer, still down 11-16. Ryleigh Leonard got a couple serves to fall for aces to help Sigourney cut into the deficit even more, but the Lady Bears countered to end up winning a close 25-21 set. Karyssa Westfall had three solid serves to help her team and then finished out the set by crushing a shot over the net from her position in the back row.

“We were moving well without the ball and that’s big for us because we aren’t exceptionally fast. Reading their hitters and trusting and working together helped us early,” Becker said. “They made a nice adjustment by moving Sloane to the right side and we just took too long to counter.”

Sigourney got out to a quick 7-3 lead in set two, getting some more big points from their outside hitters along the way. EV made a run to close the gap down to a single point but then Sigourney got two back to hold onto a 14-12 lead. The Lady Bears pushed back again, gaining a little more momentum for each point won. Sigourney wound up calling a timeout after EV got within a point with the score reading 17-16. This time the Lady Savages ended up closing out the set with a run, winning the set 25-20.

“The name of our problem right now is consistency. The front row is the most important line of defense for us and without them adjusting, the other team gets a chance to dictate the game,” Becker said. “We made some runs but just couldn’t finish and didn’t do some smart things at key times. It’s a matter of mentality and we tried to do too much.”

Sigourney used that late momentum to take a 7-1 lead in set three, distributing the ball to various hitters on the floor to keep the EV defense on their toes. The Lady Savages took over throughout much of the set, extending their lead 13-2 after Magill crushed another ball along the sideline. EV put together a run to stay within 10 points but Sigourney would go on to win the set by a convincing score of 25-14, taking a one set lead in the process.

“All of our hitters were getting good looks at the ball and we were distributing the ball more,” Sigourney coach Chris Carter said. “I think it was the difference with the hitters being smarter with the ball.”

The trend continued as Sigourney took another early 5-1 lead in what turned out to be the final set. The Lady Bears responded with four straight points to tie things up and get the Lady Savages out of sorts, resulting in a timeout. Giulia Molinari put down three consecutive serves, two resulting in aces, to help Sigourney retake the lead 11-8. A huge point in the set came from an equally huge block by Cheyenne Conrad, giving EV a point while firing up the home crowd and her teammates. Maddy Shaw followed that up with an ace for the Lady Bears to tie the score at 17 all.

“Winning game two was important for us and then we got out to that strong start in game three,” Carter said. “We needed to put the pressure on them and let them make the mistakes.”

Sigourney put together the next run in the set, winning four of the next five points to go up by three points. Sensing the momentum shifting back to Sigourney late in the set, EV called timeout. The Lady Bears scored one more point in the set, while the Lady Savages closed it out to win 25-19 and win the match three sets to one.

“We really didn’t want to into a fifth set and I just kept telling them to focus on the basics,” Carter said. “We’re a little injury laden right now with Makenna Hammes being out and Kaylee Weber a little banged up, in addition to having Heidi roll her ankle in this game. We had to make some adjustments, but we just focused on what was working for us.”

Magill led the Lady Savages with 16 of their 34 kills in addition to nine digs and four aces on 14 service attempts. Molinari had another big night, finishing with 10 assists, seven kills, five digs and three aces. Savhannah White led the team with 17 assists and Maddie Schwenke led with six aces on 19 service attempts, in addition to nine digs and three kills.

Sigourney headed to Mid-Prairie for a tournament on September 22 and then hosted Keota on September 24 while EV took to the road on September 24 to play Iowa Valley.