Spartans volleyball earns sixth win of the season
In set four of Tuesday’s road volleyball match against the Woodbine Tigers, Exira-EHK Spartan Junior Jaelynn Petersen jumped at the net spiking the ball, finishing off the set and helping lead her team to their sixth victory of the season.
This is the Spartans first victory since beating Ar-We-Va in a triangular a week ago. Following that victory, they suffered losses to IKM-Manning and Coon Rapids-Bayard.
“I think it feels great as a team,” said Sophomore Taryn Petersen. “I think it gives us a little more of a confidence boost going into next week and we should keep our heads up because we did pretty good tonight.”
The Spartans got off to a slow start losing set one 25-12. Following the set loss, Spartan head coach Derek Reischauer gathered his team.
“No special message,” he said. “Just made a couple of small adjustments offensively and defensively and mentioned it is only one set and it takes three to win a match. The girls pulled themselves up and out of that first set and that is great to see. I had as much fun watching the girls in that match than I've had all year.”
The Spartans got back on track, winning set two 25-19, including six serve aces from Taryn Petersen. Set three, they continued to roll earning a 25-18 victory putting themselves in front with a 2-1 series advantage.
In set four, the Spartans got off to a 3-0 start before Woodbine scored their first point. Later on in the set, Jaelynn Petersen dove multiple times to prevent potential points from the Tigers, including a huge block at the net.
“That was pretty cool,” Taryn said of Jaelynn. “We do a lot of blocking drills in practice, and our team is pretty short. We have to do a lot of jumping. They [Woodbine] have good hitters on their team and they’re tall, so it’s kind of predicted where they’re going to hit too watching them during warm-ups, and I think that kind of helped us going through this game.”
With this win, the Spartans move to 6-3 overall. They will have some time off before they return to action Tuesday on the road at 7:30 p.m. against the 2-3 Paton-Churdan Rockets, who are coming off their third consecutive loss, most recently to West Harrison.
The Rockets are led by Grace Culllum with 37 assists, Mia Russell with 28 kills and one block, and Alivya Smith with 53 digs and eight serve aces.
“We just have to keep things new and fresh in practice,” Reischauer said. “The layoff gives us a chance to go back and refine some of our fundamentals and also add on to our skill sets. Next week is a big week for us, we have a chance to put ourselves in position to battle down the stretch for some very meaningful conference matches. If we let up, that opportunity could slip out of our grasp.”
