Mia Stanco goes up for a kill in Highland’s 3-0 win over Horizon Science Academy in Saturday’s tournament volleyball contest.
Rob Hamilton | Morrow County Sentinel Mia Stanco goes up for a kill in Highland’s 3-0 win over Horizon Science Academy in Saturday’s tournament volleyball contest.
Rob Hamilton | Morrow County Sentinel
Not having their two All-Ohio players in the line-up proved to be no impediment to the Highland volleyball team in their tournament opener on Saturday.
Hosting Horizon Science Academy in the Division IV sectionals, the Lady Scots cruised to a 25-3, 25-5, 25-4 win to advance to Monday’s district semifinal contest.
Much like in their final regular season contests that saw the program clinch a share of the MOAC title to earn its 12th straight league championship, the Scots were without senior setter Larsen Terrill and senior hitter Kameron Stover. Not having those two All-Ohio leaders didn’t affect the team against Horizon. Neither did having a long idle period since their final regular season match.
“We haven’t played since last Tuesday with Ontario, so we haven’t played in 10 days,” said head coach Rob Terrill. “We needed to play some. You can only do so much in practice against yourself, so it was good just to work on a few things that we’ve put into play that hopefully we’ll need down the road. We played 14 players today and we’re getting a couple back from injury, so that’s good. The pieces are coming back together.”
It didn’t take long for the Scots to win the first set against their guests. Leading 2-1, the team got three points from Addie Mullins and Logan Bradley added nine straight to make it a 15-2 margin. Then, with the score 16-3, Reagan Maibach and Faith Gantz combined to serve nine straight points to give Highland a 1-0 lead in the match.
The second and third sets would be more of the same. Makaylee Merckling opened the second set with eight straight points to stake the team to a big lead. With the score 16-4, Mia Stanco served five in a row and Kendal Kline added three points to conclude the match.
Terrill was pleased with his team’s defense, which didn’t give up any points to Horizon on their serves. He noted that after Stover was injured, he didn’t make any major changes to his rotations.
“We’ve had to plug some people in and change a couple positions,” he said. “I’m not one that’s big on moving people, so we haven’t made a lot of changes. We just tried to recreate the line-up a little bit without making a bunch of changes. I think they responded really well. We’ve stuck with this change since Kammy got hurt. I told them today we’re just looking to get better. I was more worried about our side of the net than I was their side of the net.”
And there wasn’t much to worry about in Saturday’s match. With a 2-0 lead, the Scot remained efficient in winning the third set. Kline opened with six straight points and the duo of Bradley and Georgia Gantz combined for nine straight to open up a 17-2 Scot lead. Both Faith Gantz and Merckling would add three points each to finish off Horizon and move Highland to the district finals, where they play Worthington Christian after a very quick turnaround.
“This is the first time we’ve played in 10 days, but then we’re turn around and within one week, it’ll be the Sweet 16,” he said. “We have the potential to play Saturday, Monday and Thursday, so it happens that quick. So, we’ll just get ready for them — we won’t have a lot of time to do it.”
In the win, Maibach had 14 kills, while Stanco added eight kills and three aces and Bradley had six kills and six aces. Faith Gantz had five aces, Kline had four and Merckling added three. Also, Mullins, Jossalyn Varney and Addi Liszkai all had three kills.
Rob Hamilton can be reached at 419-946-3010, ext. 1807. Connect with him on Twitter at @SportsMCS
