Young Riverside bows out of regional

HUDSON >> The Riverside volleyball team hasn’t made its last venture to the Division I regional volleyball tournament.

Those were the words promised by Beavers’ coach Ali Schultz after her youthful squad lost a 25-20, 3028, 25-21 match to Solon in the first of two regional semifinals at Hudson High School on Nov. 1.

Returning to the site where a senior-heavy team lost in the regional semifinal round a year ago, the Beavers either held late leads or were even in all three sets against the Comets.

But it was a veteran Solon team (22-4) that the answers in crunch time, answers Schultz said her team will have in the very near future.

“There is so much talent, young talent, looking back at me in that locker room,” Schultz said. “They have this experience under their belts now. We’re going to be back next year, and we’re going to be back the year after that.”

Because of its exceptional serving and blocking, Riverside (21-5) came ever so close to winning one of the first two sets. Getting blocks from people like Jen Sivak (8) and Brook Meznarich (5) helped take pace off of the vapor-trail spikes being unleashed by Solon’s Kiana Mack, Alexandra Levi and McKenna Podracky.

But each time Riverside pulled even or got a late lead, the Comets responded.

In the first set, Solon had a 21-19 lead after Riverside junior Cassie Jordan blocked a Solon spike.

But then Solon rattled off five of the next six points for the win.

In the second set, Riverside had leads of 2322, 24-23 and 28-27. But then Simone Tyson, with her heavy top-spin jump serve, stepped to the line, the Comets rallied from a 28-27 deficit for the 30-28 win.

Again in the third, Riverside had momentum. A Katie Tracz spike and a pair of miss-hits by the Comets gave the Beavers a 2119 lead. But again, Tyson stepped to the line and served it out, two winners coming on ace serves and a pair coming on hard spikes by Mack.

“We’ve been working on that all year,” said Solon co-coach Missy Fitzgerald of Tyson’s hard-to-handle jump serve. “That’s a nice weapon to have.”

Fitzgerald and fellow cocoach Kaylee Kruse were on the Solon squad the last time the Comets advanced to the regional tournament in 2011. She said getting to the regional final against the winner of Walsh Jesuit and Massillon Jackson is special.

Fitzgerald credited Riverside’s block for giving her team some trouble. But the Comets “kept swinging away,” she said and eventually found the holes on the court.

Schultz was happy with her team’s front-line defense.

“It was huge,” she said. “Watching them warm up, their middles were practically hitting at the 10-foot line. They didn’t get that in the match. They were getting great swings, but we got a hand of a lot of them.”

Tracz had a team-high 10 kills. Aubrey Low, one of five seniors on the team, had a team-high 12 assists. Junior Taylor Reigle had eight digs.

Schultz lamented some youthful mistakes, such as a handful of net calls against her squad.

“I think in a high-stakes game, a young team got flustered at times,” she said. “We made too many errors. If we could have reeled in those mistakes, we might have made things different in those sets.”

Schultz said her team will chalk the loss up to a learning experience.

“Last year this team got to the regionals and we lost in the first round,” she said. “We had four seniors on the court most of the time. I just told them we got back to the exact same place this year that last year’s team did in a year when everybody thought we’d be rebuilding.

“This team blew me away with what they accomplished this year. We’ll be back.”