NORTH ROBINSON – Tuesday marked Colonel Crawford’s ninth match of the season already.
Nobody else in the Northern 10 has played more than seven, most have only taken the court four or five times. Four of the Eagles’ nine have come in the last four days with a tri-match on Saturday against Western Reserve and Margaretta, a conference crossover clash with Carey on Monday, followed by this battle with Willard for top spot in the East Division.
The Eagles swept the Roughriders, beat the Polar Bears in three, and swept the Blue Devils before grinding out an impressive 25-22, 28-26, 25-18 sweep of the Flashes in what was just the this home match of the season.
“Back to back nights, we played on a different level,” Colonel Crawford coach Jaime Valentine said. “I told the girls … we just showed a lot of maturity from where we came in at the beginning of the season, they’re slowly working through these little kinks of mental weakness and we’ve figured out how to pull together and overcome adversity.
“Every time we do that and come from behind, it helps us build a little confidence and they are more calm in those stressful situations, which is huge.”
They had more chances to work through those kinks against Willard as the Eagles built a lead in the opening set then saw it vanish before grinding out a three-point win. And in the second it was the Flashes who stormed out to a big lead, but the Eagles slowly chipped away and turned a 7-1 deficit into a 15-12 lead, then stretched that to 21-16 late. Willard clawed back to tie it at 24-24, 25-25, and 26-26 before an emphatic kill from Reese Redman (16 kills) and tip from Lila Plesac put the hosts up two sets.
“We have a very intelligent team … but we have a lot of perfectionist qualities,” Valentine said. “We don’t do well when we make mistakes — nobody likes to make mistakes — but this is a game about mistakes and that’s how you win. People are going to make mistakes and that’s how you score, so we have to learn how to rebound … but they’ve shown a lot of maturity these last couple nights and they’ve grown from that first loss of the season when we couldn’t come back.
“It says a lot about the youth we have on this team with not as much experience, and the other kids who are stepping up and becoming leaders.”
Colonel Crawford got into a groove in the third set and never looked back to cap off the statement win and take control of the East Division with rival Buckeye Central lurking a half-game back — they meet in two weeks.
“It’s exciting even though it’s different,” Valentine said of the new Northern 10 format. “This change is good I feel for the volleyball community and the area, for us to bring these teams into the league makes it so much tougher. It’s an exciting thing for our kids and this is the type of competition we want to be facing every single night.”
If Valentine thinks it feels different, imagine how Willard coach Ashley Bond feels with the Flashes being one of the six new teams to join the league.
“It’s very much a learning curve because we don’t know any of these teams, we’re trying to figure it out,” she said. “We’ve never played Colonel Crawford before since I’ve been at Willard, so we didn’t really know a whole bunch about them. We saw them on film a few times and we knew they had some good hitters … honestly we weren’t really prepared for what we saw.
“All these teams are brand new to us, we’re just trying to figure it out one game at a time. And we’re a new team, we graduated a lot of kids from last year … all things considered we’ll hopefully be there by the end.”
One positive she took was how scrappy her back line played against the Eagles who have 321 kills on the season already.
“I thought our defense stepped up big time,” Bond said. “They have some good hitters, Alexis (Rettig) and Edyn (Carr) back there had some really good ups and when you get those it kind of frustrates hitters. If we can keep that defense up, that’s going to be a strength.”
Rettig finished with 21 digs and two aces, Carr had 13 digs and one ace, Leah Weiss 22 kills, two aces, 11 digs, two blocks. Redman led the Eagles with 16 kills and two blocks, Emmi Powers had seven kills and two blocks, Saylor Holt five kills, Sophia Gray seven digs and five receptions, Alex Voll eight digs and one ace, Alaina Parr two kills, two aces, five receptions, Lila Plesac 10 assists.
“I’m just so proud of them for being able to maintain that momentum and it has a lot to do with our leadership,” Valentine said. “This team has such great chemistry and they’re all focused on the same goal.”
zholden@gannett.com | 419-617-6018 | Twitter/X: @Zachary_Holden
This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Colonel Crawford sweeps Willard in Northern 10 East Division bout
