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ALTON – Edwardsville's volleyball team was seemingly hitting on all cylinders Thursday evening.
The Tigers overcame a couple of hiccups in the second game to take a 25-10, 25-15 win over Alton at the Redbird Nest in a Southwestern Conference match to go to 21-5 overall on the season, 6-0 in the SWC; Alton fell to 15-16-1 overall, 3-3 in the league.
“We had a couple of rough spots in there, but the girls worked it out,” said Tiger coach Jami Parker. “They kept working through and really closed well on both games.”
The Redbirds had closed to within a couple of points about midway through Game 2 of the match, prompting a time out from Edwardsville. “We came out of that huddle and you saw them kind of reset a little bit,” Parker said, “came back out with some kills; the kids were really good about getting their hands back up in the air and celebrating with one another – they kind of turned their own energy around.”
Thursday was Alton's Senior Night, with Emily Stahl, Gwen Hunter and Sydney Schmidt being honored before the match. “Senior Night is always an emotional night for every team,” Parker said. “They were really taking some good swings against us and really pushing our blocking a little bit.”
Coming out of the Game 2 time out, Edwardsville “found our holes, they found our areas of weakness and what not,” said Redbird coach Stacey Ferguson. “I'm proud of my girls; they didn't give up. We're outsized (against the Tigers) – them swinging at us is a lot easier than us hitting on them because their blocks are bigger than our blocks, their swings are bigger than our swings – size, experience and what not, but I'm proud of my girls for continuing to try, continuing to keep the ball from hitting our court – that's all we can do, that's the only way we're going to continue to get better is playing hard like that.”
One thing Alton did was kept the Tigers from going on long runs, kept things going back-and-forth between the two teams. “That's what I liked,” Ferguson said. “That's something we focus on and talk about is, 'hey, they get one, let's get two' and really try to limit the runs the other team gets so we're not digging a hole that we can't climb out of.”
Game 1 started out a bit even before Edwardsville gained some momentum and began scoring on the Redbirds, keeping them at bay enough to extend their lead to come out on top in the opener. Game 2 began the same way, the teams splitting the first four points before the Tigers began to seemingly pull away, eventually getting the lead to 8-4 and then 13-8 before Alton took advantage of Tiger errors to pull to within 13-11; EHS called time out to try to stall the Redbird momentum.
Stall the momentum the time out did as the Tigers got the lead to 17-13 and then 24-13 to close to match point; the Redbirds held off Edwardsville with a couple of points, but the Tigers went on to close out the match.
Kate Martin led EHS with 13 points on serve with three aces, with Rachel Verdun adding six points and Megan Woll three; Martin added seven kills with Maria Smith, with Rachel Pranger getting six kills on the evening; Pranger had eight digs, Verdun seven and Martin and Woll six each while Verdun had 18 assists on the night. For the Redbirds, Grace Kane had 10 digs and Stahl three kills and Rachel Holmes had two kills on the evening.
The win put the Tigers one game short of going unbeaten in the SWC and taking the league title outright – a goal the players had set for themselves this season. “It's a good conference, and the girls' goal this year was to win it outright,” Parker said. “They're one win away; Belleville West (who the Tigers have yet to play) is always a great team, but we've got (Breese) Mater Dei on Monday, who's also a great team; we have back-to-back big games that we need to settle in or and prepare for.”
The Tigers head to Breese for the match against Mater Dei at 6 p.m. Monday before hosting the Maroons at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday; Alton is at West at 5:45 p.m. Oct. 19 before both teams enter the IHSA Class 4A Quincy Regional beginning Oct. 23.
