Millard West Uses Balance, Defense to Rally Past Papillion-LaVista
Class A #3 Millard West opened its season with a 3-2 loss against #5 Papillion-LaVista on Tuesday night in a match where the Wildcats led 2-0. On Thursday night against #4 Papillion-LaVista, Millard West found itself down 1-0 and trailing…
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Continue ReadingClass A #3 Millard West opened its season with a 3-2 loss against #5 Papillion-LaVista on Tuesday night in a match where the Wildcats led 2-0. On Thursday night against #4 Papillion-LaVista, Millard West found itself down 1-0 and trailing 22-21 after the Monarchs got a kill from Chloe Paschal.
At that point, things could have gone downhill in a hurry for Millard West, but a couple kills from Cameron Young later and a complete change in the momentum wound up leading to a 13-25, 25-22, 25-14, 25-22 victory for the Wildcats.
“The biggest thing we’re trying to put into the girls is just going with the flow and making sure we’re taking care of our game. Against Papio South we were in system the first two sets and then we didn’t make adjustments and didn’t play our game plan,” Millard West coach Joe Wessel said. “Tonight we came out flat and between sets one and two we told them to stick to the game plan that we have. And the plan was to just take care of the ball. Sometimes we try to be too powerful and volleyball is a game of power and finess.
“We have that one-point mentality where we just focus on the next point and finish.”
After Paschal’s kill put Papillion-LaVista ahead 22-21 in the second set, Millard West’s Gabi Nordaker answered to tie it at 22 and Young hammered home a kill to make it 23-22 Wildcats. After a net violation on the Monarchs, Young got the set-winner for Millard West.
The Wildcats continued that momentum in the third set, when they never trailed. In the fourth set, Millard West went on a 8-3 run to break a tie at 8-all. The Monarchs wound up pulling closer toward the end of the set and fought off two match points before Hailey Petersen‘s tip over the Papillion-LaVista block in the middle fell to the floor to end it.
Petersen led Millard West with 15 kills while Sadie Millard had nine and Young and Nordaker each had eight. Bree Green and Ella Hazen each had 18 assists for the Wildcats and libero Jaiden Centeno had 35 digs, two aces and six assists.
After the first set, Wessel said he switched how the Wildcats were blocking to funnel more of the Monarch attacks to Centeno, which paid off in a big way as the Wildcats were able to stay in system much more often following the switch.
“We were swing blocking to get out (to the pins) and get big since (Norah Sis and Paschal) reach high and try to tool the block and then we went to a static block were we keyed on them and went straight up,” he said. “That was the biggest change defensively, we told our defense with the change in the block now we got to play the defense behind them. Jaiden Centeno is like two people back there – she picks up everything and we kept in system.”
Sis finished the match with 18 kills for the Monarchs while Paschal had 15. Hannah Smith had six kills and two blocks on the right side for Papio while Brooklyn Schram had five kills, two ace serves and 31 assists.