KARL PEARSON
JEFFERSON — The Geneva volleyball team was so eager Tuesday night to get to the Division II district championship game Thursday that it nearly was guilty of getting ahead of itself and not getting there at all.
Thanks to the ability of its seven seniors to collect themselves and a group of underclassmen who were willing to make sure the team got there, the second-seeded Eagles earned a 25-17, 25-14, 20-25, 25-19 victory over fifth-seeded West Geauga in the night’s first district semifinal. Geneva (17-7) will play in its first district championship match since 2001, when coach Annah Haeseler was still an assistant coach to the now-retired Stan Bielech.
Geneva’s opponent will be top-seeded Lake Catholic, which defeated fourth-seed Notre Dame-Cathedral Latin, 25-16, 25-12, 25-17, in the second semifinal. Lake Catholic (17-7) defeated Geneva in last year’s district semifinal.
Late in the third game, it appeared Geneva might finish its night’s work early, leading 18-12. But West Geauga (11-11) rallied from there to force a fourth game.
“They just flipped the switch and got the momentum going,” Haeseler said. “But I thought we came back when we got a few kills. That was a good sign.”
It was a scary situation for at least some of the seniors.
“Oh, gosh,” senior Taylor Webb, who had 13 points, 18 aces on 33-of-37 spiking, two ace blocks and an ace dink, said. “We got kind of quiet and (West Geauga) got kind of loud.
“We just had to calm down and take a deep breath.”
“We slipped up because we weren’t talking,” senior setter Stephanie Booth, who had eight points, but more importantly, mixed in three ace dinks and two ace blocks and had 28 ace sets on a 52-of-53 night, said. “We just needed to regroup and focus again.
“I wasn’t nervous. I knew if we calmed down, we’d be all right.”
Some big contributions from middle hitters Ashley Meaney, a junior, and Veronica Clutter, a sophomore, as well as sophomore outside hitter-setter Audra Puckrin, made the difference over the final stretch.
“I always get a little nervous, but I knew we just had to calm down and pull through,” Meaney, who had two of her four ace spikes and one of her three ace blocks in the fourth game, said. “It really was a matter of the middle hitters connecting with our setters. We had to keep our attitude and our momentum up, too.”
The fourth game still had its tense moments, too, with a tie still existing at 10. But a run of six straight points off the serve of senior Hillary Hambleton, who led the Eagles with 25 points, opened up a 16-10 lead for Geneva. The Wolverines never got closer than 18-15 again as Webb blasted seven of her ace spikes and Hambleton mixed in four more, including the match-clinching score.
“All it took for us to win that third game was deciding not to be hesitant,” West Geauga coach Tom Booth said. “We’d been real hesitant in the first two games. We would have taken the fourth game, too, but we went into another period where we became hesitant again.”
Booth credited Webb’s ability to bomb away in the fourth game with deciding the match.
“She started hitting through our block,” he said. “When they ran their quick offense, we had a hard time getting a block on her.”
“We started to go more to the outside to try and hit around the block,” Webb said. “Our underclassmen really did a good job tonight, too. They’ve all come along for the ride, and they’ve made a big contribution.”
“We moved Taylor and Hillary farther outside in the last game, and that really seemed to get us going again,” Haeseler said.
Geneva was in command in the first two games. Both teams started slowly, with a run of four straight missed serves in the opening few points of the first game before seven points from Hambleton and six more from Webb, along with four ace spikes, told the tale for the Eagles in the first game. Seven spiking errors by the Wolverines also decided the first game.
Strong serving by Geneva in the second game carried the day. Kristyn Pristov had seven points, including two ace serves, while five points from Hambleton and four from Puckrin powered the Eagles, along with four more ace spikes from Webb. West Geauga had six spiking errors in the second game as well.
West Geauga fought its way back into the match in the third game behind four ace spikes from Kristina Obelenis. Jessica Kodrich scored seven points and Brynne Walsh added six more for the Wolverines to force the final game.
Kodrich led West Geauga with 12 points, six ace spikes and two ace dinks. Kelly Nero also had 12 points. Walsh had 11 points, four ace spikes, an ace block and an ace dink and Alicia Varcelli contributed 11 points and three ace spikes.
Pristov backed up Hambleton’s big scoring night with 14 points. Puckrin had 10 points and 29 aces out of 51-of-52 setting.
Now, the Geneva girls will get to experience something that an Eagle squad has not since they were in elementary school.
If they can win Thursday, they would accomplish something no Geneva team has done in their lifetime, with the last trip to the regional tournament coming in 1986 under Bielech’s leadership. That was long before Haeseler even played high school volleyball.
“It’s really exciting,” Booth said. “This makes us want to push even harder. We’re going to be ready to go for it.”
“This is what we’ve worked for all season,” Webb said. “It’s a big honor for us to do this. I’m humbled by it. We’re ready to give our all.”
“How exciting!” Haeseler said. “We’re going to come ready to play and ready to play tough.”
