GLEN CARBON - The girls' volleyball team at Father McGivney Catholic High School bounced back from a loss at Marquette Catholic last Thursday to defeat Centralia Christ Our Rock Lutheran 25-18, 25-11 in a Gateway Metro Conference match Tuesday night at the McGivney gym.
It was the fourth win in the last five matches for the Griffins, who improved their record to 13-8 on the season and 5-1 in the league. It was an important bounce-back match for McGivney as well, with the Griffins playing well throughout.
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"Good, very, very good," said first-year McGivney head coach Jake Williams. "We kind of took a little lump last week on us, tonight was some nice home cooking for a nice 2-0 clean game. Looked like our defense was on, our setters were on point and our hitters did a very good job tonight."
It has been more of an up-and-down season for the Griffins heading into October, but the team is working to improve on their consistency.
"No, we're more up-down," Williams said. "We're a little bit more emotional, we hit little lulls and it tends to kind to bleed a little bit throughout, so it's not kind of a weak spot here and there, we don't kind of clear our heads and just let it go. And it's kind of spots. We're working on it, it's getting better and when it's clean, it looks like tonight. So it's something we're still working on and we'll get it fixed."
Still, it was good to get back to the home gym, which the Griffins use to their advantage, with the home crowd support, which helps the players tremendously.
"It's always great to be at home," Williams said. "We have good fans and a comfort zone here and we play very well here. So, it's nice to get restarted after last week's ending, so yeah, tonight was a good game. I was happy with the girls tonight."
Playing in a relatively new conference such as the Gateway Metro, which has the Griffins, Silver Stallions, Explorers, Maryville Christian, Bunker Hill, and Metro-East Lutheran, is very important for the team and also a point of emphasis for Williams and the coaching staff.
"Yeah, that's what I always try to talk to them," Williams said. "Right now, we are tied for first, we still have a game against Metro we've got to play, Marquette's been kind of the has-been for years, the state level and we got through them as far as the home-and-home games. So we told them every game, no matter who we're playing and as a conference, it's important. So focus one game at a time."
After winning the first set 25-18, the Griffins went out to both a 5-1 and 7-2 lead in the second set before service points from Mia Range put the Griffins up 10-3. The two sides exchanged points for the majority of the set, bringing the score to 17-9 before Elizabeth Britt served up a pair of points for COR to cut the lead to 17-11. The Griffins got the ball back at 18-11 and from there, Range served out the match, scoring the last seven points, getting big shots from Emma Bukovac before ending the match on a service ace to give the Griffins a 25-11 win and a 2-0 sweep of the Silver Stallions.
The Griffins next play at Maryville Christian on Thursday and host Waterloo Gibault Catholic next Tuesday before playing at Bunker Hill Oct. 4 and having a home match against Metro-East on Oct. 6 as the regular season begins to wind down. Williams is sticking with the one match-at-a-time mantra for his team.
"As I said, we literally want to be one game at a time," Williams said. "These girls here, I don't want to get them too far ahead, thinking I just want to keep it simple and Thursday, we have Maryville Christian. That's who's on the radar, we're going to focus on them, that's what we're going to attack, go on Thursday."
As far as the current week, it's so far, so good for McGivney.
"Oh, yeah, absolutely," Williams said. "Tonight, nothing to complain about. Tonight was a good night."
Dan Brannan also contributed to this story.
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