Crawfordsville’s volleyball team righted the ship after their first loss of the season Tuesday with a 3-0 win over Fountain Central.
The 25-6, 25-13, 25-13 victory moved the Athenians to 16-1 on the season, while the Mustangs fall to 4-15.
“Our team was back,” Crawfordsville coach Kelly Johnson said, after referring to Tuesday’s loss to Southmont as “an implosion.”
“Our focus was back. We played pretty aggressively and we got back on our game. It was good to see.”
All phases of the Athenians game was on display, starting with 16 service aces, against only two service errors.
“We had too many Tuesday (service errors),” Johnson said. “We are aggressive with our serve — it’s been a strength. Only two tonight was good.”
Seven of those aces came from Macy Bruton, who had a list of other stats to go with the back row work, as the the sophomore had 15 kills and four digs. She now has 328 kills this season.
Hallie Gayler and Alyx Bannon each had seven kills. Bannon added two blocks and an assist, while Gayler had three digs. “They both played well in the middle tonight,” Johnson noted. “Their timing was good.”
Laine Schlicher set the hitters up with 18 assists, moving her over 300 for the season, and the junior had 21 digs, a kill and three aces to go with it. Shea Williamson contributed seven assists, four digs and four more service aces.
“Our setters, our back row and our defense all did a good job tonight,” Johnson said of the evening. “It was good to see. We have a big tournament Saturday and a lot of tough conference matches coming up. We need to get rolling again.”
The Mustangs, although short on the scoring end, did have some good things happen.
“We came into tonight to try and work on a few new things and then to continue to get better.” FC coach Alyssa Larson said. “In set 1, we struggled, but in set 2 and 3 we really made some improvements. We made sure each point counted. I thought we did a good job defensively against a really good Crawfordsville team. We also got some good swings in offensively.”
That defense was led by Marley Massey and Jerzi Hershberger, who dug out 17 and 14 Crawfordsville hits, respectively.
The offense was set up by Trinity Lindquist and Lillie Fishero with eighth assists each. Larissa Bowers led the attack with six kills, followed by Chloe Golia with five and Fishero with four.
“Fountain Central did a nice job digging a bunch of balls,” Johnson said of the Mustangs. They hustled and never gave up.”
The Mustangs are hosting the Bi-County tournament Saturday. They open with Attica.
The Athenians travel to Clinton Central for a tourney on Saturday. The other teams will be Frontier and Logansport. They travel to Western Boone next Tuesday in Sagamore Conference action.
Chargers swept by Red Devils
The North Montgomery volleyball was swept by West Lafayette 3-0 (25-11, 25-7, 25-12) on Thursday.
