The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Veteran players pace the Pirates
On paper, Rocky River looks like a fairly young team, but it certainly doesn’t play like one.
Because after graduating just one senior from last year’s team, head coach Karlee Bruck can finally say she has some varsity experience to work with in what is now her third year with the Pirates.
“I never thought I would say this because for the last two years I haven’t, (but) I think I have a semi-veteran team this year,” Bruck said after Rocky River swept Elyria Catholic Aug. 29 on the road for its first win of the season. “I actually have girls who are juniors and seniors now who have been with me the past two, three years, so that helps us as well, that chemistry.”
Eight players return from the 2016 squad, and of those eight, five are two-year letterwinners including junior and first-team Morning Journal all-star Ava Rauser.
In two games so far this season, Rauser has tallied 23 kills, including 11 in the Elyria Catholic game, while junior Olivia Young has 20 with just two attacking errors.
The Rauser-Young duo has been causing problems in the Great Lakes Conference for two years, but Bruck said, as a whole, the Pirates worked to strengthen their offense in the offseason — a necessity if Rocky River wants to move from GLC contender to outright champion.
“Something we really stress is tempo,” Bruck said. “We started the season just being very one dimensional,
so we talked about looking at film and running a faster offense. I think that, along with our defenders in the back row...being in system and being in that faster offense definitely helps us.”
The boost in tempo is no doubt causing opponents grief.
“Duplicating that in practice is difficult,” Elyria Catholic coach Barb Schuckman said. “(Rocky River) is young but they have a lot of varsity experience. They’re a very disciplined team, they pass well, they hit well, they serve well. Not a lot of weaknesses
in their game.”
Bruck definitely doesn’t take her team’s experience for granted, but it’s been a long road to get to where she says is a certain level of mental toughness and maturity crucial for any kind of success at the varsity level.
“These girls have been playing together since my juniors were freshmen,” Bruck said. “It’s basically been the same team...so, for lack of a better term, just the maturity, kind of working through that phase because I got them when they were 13 years
old. (We’ve been) trying to learn how to weather difficult times and let things go and move on.
“I’ve seen huge improvements out of these girls. They definitely let things roll off their backs a little bit easier and they’re ready for that next ball a lot quicker, where before they’d probably dwell on it for two or three points before they were ready to step up.”
Last season, Rocky River was in the hunt for a GLC championship right up until the final regular-season match — a game at home
against none other than Elyria Catholic. The Pirates got ahead, 2-0, before falling apart and handing the Panthers a share of the title.
With a newfound maturity, the Pirates are confident they’ve learned from that meltdown and can improve on 2016’s third-place finish to be the last GLC team standing come October.
“I just think a lot of them are hungry,” Bruck said. “They’re constantly looking to get better in some way. They’re hungry to compete and to win and I definitely think that helps us.”