Set the middle and let a couple of seniors on Senior Night take care of the rest.
Middle hitters Sarah Hallas and Alyssa Miner combined for 10 kills Thursday, bringing a smile to South Elgin coach Joni Plach’s face after the Storm’s final home game of the year.
“Sarah and Alyssa haven’t been getting set that much, and we were able to run our middles a lot,” Plach said. “We worked on establishing our middles so the outsides didn’t have double-blockers and that worked well. Our middles got a decent amount of sets.”
South Elgin won 25-18 and 25-20 over Elgin in a Upstate Eight Conference crossover as senior outside hitter Katie Innis and senior setter Renee Rush also helped give a win to a raucous Senior Night crowd.
Hallas had six kills and two assists for the Storm (10-9-1), who led from start to finish in Game 1 and then broke open Game 2 after the Maroons (11-14) clawed their way back to a 14-14 tie.
“We finished by being more smart — hitting around the block, tipping when we needed to tip, and hitting when we needed to hit,” Hallas said. “I liked our passing. We adjusted on our passing, which resulted in good hits.”
The Storm’s Phoebe Duncan served a run of five early points in Game 1, and a pair of Innis kills gave them an 11-6 lead. Elgin trailed 15-8 before cutting the lead to 19-17 on a kill from Abby Pierre-Louis.
A 6-1 scoring edge down the stretch gave South Elgin the win. The Storm led Game 2 before the Maroons fought back to a 14-14 tie, only to see South Elgin again finish strong to take the match.
“Mentality,” Pierre-Louis said. “They had the crowd and our heads weren’t in it. We didn’t have the mentality that we usually do and it’s discouraging because it was a winnable game.
“But I’ve seen a lot of positives this year. A lot of our girls have learned to fight through the losing, and you saw that when we caught up (in Game 2). But then we got stuck in ruts. We did too many little things wrong.”
For Elgin coach Scott Stewart, those little things came from the service line.
“In Game 2 we had five serving errors and we lost by five,” he said. “That’s the difference, right there. Every time we got a little run going, we’d serve in the net.”
Pierre-Louis led Elgin with five kills, teammate Tiana Palumbo had 10 assists, and Julie Camarena had six digs. South Elgin got 12 assists and five kills from Rush, Innis had four kills, and freshman setter Casie Swanson had 10 assists.
“We started out a little slow and I think we just figured out that Elgin is a good team,” Plach said. “They have 11 wins this year and they’re not someone that we can just lay back and win running away. We had to earn our points and that’s what we did.”
