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EDWARDSVILLE – Edwardsville's girls volleyball team got out of the gates a bit slowly against East St. Louis Thursday evening.
Once the Tigers got going, though, they were hard to stop, and EHS went on to take a 25-15, 25-10 Southwestern Conference win over the Flyers at Lucco-Jackson Gym. Edwardsville ran their record to 13-3 on the year, 2-0 in the SWC with the win; the Flyers fell to 3-10 overall, 2-1 in the league.
“East Side's always a good team; they're very athletic, they're very quick, they make a lot of good plays,” said Tiger coach Jami Parker following the win. “They were doing that early in the match. We blew several serves and we had a couple of hitting errors at the start – it was kind of hard to get our rhythm and get moving tonight.
“Once the girls started hitting some serves and got some rhythm, we played well to finish out both games. Once the girls got their rhythm, they got rolling and they did a very nice job with it. Rachel's (Pranger) hitting really stood out tonight and Kate (Martin) did a lot of attacking out cleanly out of the back row, and that's tough to do – very few errors. It was a team effort; the kids did some fantastic serving to finish out both games.”
“Once our intensity got up, we just started doing a lot better,” Pranger said. “Once our passes were on, our sets were on and our hits were on – it's a domino effect. East Side's definitely a good team; we started off slow, but as we picked up, the intensity got a lot better.”
The Tigers got out to a 5-2 lead in the opening game, but the Flyers pulled to within 6-5 at one point before Edwardsville ran out to a 10-7 lead; the Flyers got on another roll soon after to get to an 11-10 lead at one point before Edwardsville took control, finally shaking off the Flyers to get to 17-12 ahead and eventually 21-12 before East Side pulled to 21-15. The Tigers then went on to close out the game.
The Flyers scored the first three points of Game 2 before the Tigers got going, building a 9-5 lead before East St. Louis pulled to 10-7 and 14-10. Edwardsville got going at that point, scoring the final 11 points of the match to win going away.
Pranger had 16 kills to lead the way for EHS, with Shelbey Saye getting three blocks, Rachel Verdun 26 assists and Nicki Meyer and Verdun scoring six points each off serve,with Meyer serving up two aces and Verdun one.
The Tigers host Cor Jesu of St. Louis in a 6:30 p.m. Wednesday match, then travel to Collinsville's Fletcher Gym for a 5:45 p.m. Sept. 29 SWC match against the Kahoks.
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