Golden Eagles spike Braves in three

By ERIC CLINE

For The Sun­bury News

When Big Wal­nut and Olen­tangy met at the begin­ning of the sea­son, the Braves played a strong game, but the Golden Eagles won in three games. Now, in the mid­dle of the sea­son with both chal­leng­ing for the Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion title, it hap­pened all over again.

Olen­tangy was solid on hit­ting and strong on serves, but the Braves could never put Big Wal­nut away, and the Golden Eagles won a three-set, 25–18, 25–21, 25–23 deci­sion last Thurs­day (Sep­tem­ber 20) night at Olen­tangy High School.

“I was really proud of our girls tonight,” Big Wal­nut coach Ron Lehman said. “They really came out and played hard and fought the whole way through. They were down a few times, but they bat­tled back.”

Big Wal­nut (9–4, 8–0 OCC Cap­i­tal) never had any­thing easy with Olen­tangy (10–4, 6–2). The Braves chal­lenged the Golden Eagles all evening, helped by improved hit­ting in the mid­dle from Lau­ren Judge, strong out­side hit­ting from both Ganiru Anunike and Kasia Wal­czak, good back row defense from Jamie Riley and Madi­son Grif­fin, and solid set­ting from Sarah Arango.

“That (improv­ing the mid­dle hit­ting) was the goal,” Olen­tangy coach Michelle Mimna said. “At the time (of our first meet­ing), we were play­ing our third match of the sea­son and we had no mid­dle pres­ence. Tonight we proved when we get our mid­dles involved, we’re a bet­ter team.”

“I thought Olen­tangy played great,” Lehman said. “They have some really good hit­ters here. One of their girls was hit­ting over our block and was tough to defend, but we were able to dig her a few times.”

But when push came to shove, Big Wal­nut was able to assert them­selves as the dom­i­nant force late in each set. Olen­tangy had its chances, but stum­bled in the stretch.

“We had a real prob­lem com­pet­ing tonight,” Mimna said. “I don’t know if it looks that way because the scores were close, but we as a coach­ing staff feel Big Wal­nut never felt in dan­ger of los­ing the match, and if we can’t do that, there’s an issue there.”

Olen­tangy was within two points of the Golden Eagles in the first set only to have Big Wal­nut win the final five points on two Claire Chat­ter­ton aces, kills from Chat­ter­ton and Kalynn Bow­mar and a Brave error.

Late in the sec­ond set, Big Wal­nut trailed 20–19, but won six of the next seven points, helped by two kills and two aces from Natalie Chat­ter­ton. In the third, Olen­tangy led 5–1 and 6–2 early, but Big Wal­nut tied the score at seven later with the help of Brooke Hat­field and Abby Painter.

Later in the set, Olen­tangy held an 18–17 edge, only to see Natalie Chat­ter­ton again take over, record­ing five kills in the third rotation.

“We were spread­ing the ball around well,” Lehman said. “I thought Brooke Hat­field had a really good match. She had a lot of kills for us on the right side and Natalie did an awe­some job in the mid­dle. She played really well.”

“They had momen­tum plays go their way; those plays where you clearly thought would end on their side,” Mimna said. “It was a good effort on both sides, but we were up 6–2 in the third set and we lost by two. It’s eerily sim­i­lar. We were up at their place and wound up los­ing, so it disconcerting.”

Serv­ing was a prob­lem for both teams in the first match, but both served the ball very well all evening long. Pass­ing was also very strong for Big Wal­nut thanks in part to libero Alexis New­man, and Mor­gan Alley was strong at the set­ter position.

“I thought our kids served well tonight and I thought our pass­ing was solid for the most part,” Lehman said. “Mor­gan Alley did a nice job at set­ter tonight as well.”

BIG WALNUT 25–25, CANAL WINCHESTER 14–20 — The Golden Eagles relied on bal­ance to dis­patch the Indi­ans on Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 15, at Hilliard Davidson.

Alexis New­man (9-for-10) and Kylee Williams (5-for-6) led Big Walnut’s serv­ing joined by Krista Schmidt (8-for-12, 2 aces) and Natalie Chat­ter­ton (4-for-8, 2 aces). Abby Painter recorded 7 kills, Mor­gan Alley had 45 sets and 23 assists. New­man added 10 digs and Chat­ter­ton 5 blocks.

HILLIARD DAVIDSON 25–25, BIG WALNUT 23–21 — The host Wild­cats held off the vis­it­ing Golden Eagles in two tightly-contested games on Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 15, at Hilliard.

New­man turned in a strong per­for­mance for Big Wal­nut, going 7-for-10 in serv­ing with 3 aces while con­tribut­ing a team-high 10 digs. Mor­gan Alley also recorded 3 aces, adding 44 sets and 17 assists. Natalie Chat­ter­ton led the Golden Eagles in kills with 7 and blocks with 10.

Posted by Gary Henery on Sep 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.