Avon tops SWC foe Amherst

Not one person who came to watch Amherst and Avon battle in a sectional final expected to be home early, remembering the two other five-set regular-season meetings between the Southwestern Conference foes.

But much to the delight of the Avon faithful that came out in droves, the No. 3 seed Eagles dominated No. 4 Amherst, 3-0, to advance to the Division I Grafton District semifinals.

Avon advances to face No. 2 Elyria on Oct. 25.

“I can’t say I expected to win in three,” senior Hallie Schroeder said.

“But when we play with energy and we’re as loud as we are, we just get the job done and we’re just amazing,” Schroeder said.

The Eagles’ energy was the x-factor — not just on the court but all throughout the gym. After every ace, every kill, every block chants of “AV! O-N!” rattled the Midview gym.

“Usually when games aren’t going well for us is when we’re completely quiet,” Schroeder said. “When (Amherst) started coming back, we were out of energy so we had to find a way to bring it. So once we have energy and scream every time we get a point, it just gets us going and keeps our momentum up and then we can pull away.”

Unfortunately for Amherst (18-6), it could not find a way to keep up with the intensity from the Avon (21-2) side, and struggled to put any kind of run together, posting some of its lowest statistics of the season.

“It’s simple, Avon tonight was the better team,” Amherst coach Laurie Cogan said. “They outplayed us for the majority of all three sets, and we were just a step off. We were just kind of a step late to everything and (Avon) plays fast. They play faster than we do … we just did not get a lot of our blocks close the way we’re accustomed to doing.”

Avon put the pressure on the Comets early, going up by as many as six points late in the first set, and never let up.

“It is very tough playing from behind,” Cogan said. “We have to (play) by committee, and everybody has to be at their best, and I don’t think everybody played their best volleyball for a long enough period of time to make a difference.

“I think they had spurts where they had some great swings, but we couldn’t sustain the offense.”

On the other hand, the Avon offense rolled. Schroeder had 12 kills, Katie Sopko added 11 and setter Maddy Jerdonek had 38 assists, and while the hitters may get all the glory, every Avon front row player praised the work of Jerdonek knowing full well those big swings wouldn’t be possible if the ball wasn’t placed perfectly.

“Maddy played so good,” Sopko said. “She’s amazing, good at back row, good at front row. Her sets, I just love hitting them.

“We had a good flow tonight.”

“It was their night, but we obviously wish them well,” Cogan said. “They’re representing the SWC and we’re always fans of the SWC moving forward in tournaments, so we hope the two SWC teams could possibly meet later in the tournament to represent our conference.”

Elyria stuffs Magnificat

Elyria knew it was in for a

tough match against Magnificat despite the Blue Streaks’ seven wins on the season. But on Oct. 20 the Pioneers defeated Magnificat, 3-0, in a Division I Grafton District sectional final to keep their season alive and advance to a district semifinal date with Avon on Oct. 25.

“I know (Magnificat’s) record isn’t the greatest, but they play all state-ranked teams so you know that they’re coming up against that competition night after night,” Elyria coach Jen Shouse said. “The wins that they did have are against some pretty good schools, so we knew that the record isn’t indicative of what they were going to be.”

Elyria (21-2) hadn’t played a match since its regular season finale against Shaker Heights on Oct. 13, and Shouse attributed some of the big holes her team would dig itself into as postseason nerves.

“We weren’t in system a lot of the night, we were out of system quite a bit, but our hitters did a good job,” Shouse said. “We had a lot of hitting errors is Set 3 but we were able to pull it out so I’m happy.

“I told them, ‘You got your tournament jitters out, it’s been a week since you played, you’re good. You got your feet wet, now it’s time to go.’”

The Pioneers saw major production out of their top hitters — Jessie Lee had 23 kills and Haley Schultz added seven — but it was junior Chelsey Farris, returning for her first game since suffering an injury earlier this season,

that added a whole new element to the Elyria offense.

Farris had nine kills in the match, but had three straight kills and a block to carry Elyria out of a 23-21 hole in the first set to come back and win it.

“(Rachel Holliday’s) sets are really good, and she puts them in spots where I can hit the ball,” Farris said.

“She’s only been back a week and she’s still trying to learn her grounds in there but she’s been busting it, so she came back at the right time and she made a big impact tonight,” Shouse said of Farris. “Early on in the season she would shut down easier and she’d be a little hesitant but she’s starting to rebound a little bit more and keep going and be a little more resilient if things don’t go her way.”

After losing to Mentor in the final week of the regular season, Lee said the team took a step back and focused on not dwelling on the mistakes but learning and moving forward — something that came in handy against Magnificat when the Pioneers found themselves the victims of some questionable calls.

“After our Mentor game where we got a lot of bad calls we were like, ‘Focus on letting it go. OK, we didn’t get the call, arguing isn’t going to do anything about it so let’s just play the next play,’ and then at the end when we were down we didn’t want to go four (sets) so we said, ‘Let’s just work hard now and finish it,’” Lee said.