BURTON–Berkshire improved to 3-0 on the season with a convincing 3-0 sweep of visiting Madison on Thursday.
The Badgers won the match 25-20, 25-14, 25-19.
“It’s a solid start against some pretty good teams,” said Berkshire head coach Joni Prots. “We played Solon on Monday and Madison today. Those are both strong programs, so being able to come out and get into the flow (of things) is nice. We’re doing a good job distributing the ball. On Monday, our hitters were pretty even with attempts and kills. That’s something we’ve focused on this year, and it makes us a bit more unpredictable. I think that makes us a better team with the group that we have, and they’re playing to their strengths.”
The scoring was tight throughout set one with neither team gaining a lead of more than seven, but the Badgers’ defense earned the final say as Jill Smetana and Marissa Rish finished off the set with a block at the net.
Berkshire rode that momentum to a dominant second-set victory.
The Badgers led 5-1 early and 19-10 later in the set.
Rish set up a Kate Miller kill to close out the win.
Madison recovered and remained competitive throughout the third set, but Berkshire pulled away toward the end to clinch their third straight victory.
The Badgers overcame adversity in the first and third sets to seal their sweep.
“A lot of times I talk about taking care of our side of the court and making the other team score their own points,” Prots said. “In both of those sets, we had stretches where we had two, three, four-point swings off our own errors. We just have to take a deep breath on our side and think about making the next play; we talk about that next play mentality so that we’re ready to move on and make those (rough) stretches less extensive.”
When the Badgers were doing well, it was mainly due to their offensive attack led by their setters, Rish and Ava Chuha.
That duo combined for 26 assists on 44 total kills, and the two working together as a unit can pay dividends for Berkshire down the line.
“Ava and I train hard at practice every single day,” Rish said. “We’re comfortable spreading (the ball) around to everyone, and our offense is really strong all the way around; it keeps people guessing. We can feed it to almost everyone on the team, and that will get us through a lot of games when we’re down.”
Kirsten Shaffer led the Badgers at the net with 12 kills. Smetana finished with nine, while Hannah Hutchinson and Miller pitched in with six and seven kills, respectively.
The Badgers lost several key players from last season’s conference co-championship squad but they have a new level of versatility with this season’s team.
“I think it adds a little element of surprise,” Prots said. “You can’t predict who we’re going to go when we need a point. We have lots of people who can score that point; Ava and Marissa are doing a great job making decisions and distributing the ball. We’re starting strong and must keep building on that moving forward.”
Madison dropped to 1-2 on the year following the loss to Berkshire, but despite set two, the Blue Streaks were resilient.
“We didn’t miss serves tonight; that was a huge improvement,” said Madison head coach Amanda Titman-Mitchell. “We played Euclid this week and gave them 10 points each set on just serves; we came in today talking about what serves we were going to make as opposed to, ‘Don’t miss a serve.’ We also discussed having fun this week at practice, and they did that today. I couldn’t have asked for more. Our defense was awesome; that’s a great Berkshire team, and they put the ball down.”
That defense was spearheaded by Kendra Smith, who finished with nine blocks. Tori Semple added seven blocks and four service aces.
Despite the loss, Madison showed improvement from Monday to Thursday.
“It means everything,” Titman-Mitchell said. “This is a new coaching staff, and we went into practice yesterday not talking about the missed serves but talking about what we’re going to do to get better. We made it fun, and the coaching staff learned how to motivate this team, which was a big win. It’s only up from here.”
Madison looks to bounce back in a tri-match with Cardinal and Chagrin Falls on Saturday.
“We need to put the ball down, and we didn’t do that tonight,” Titman-Mitchell said. “We have some big hitters, and we need to get our sets higher for our hitters so we can make something happen.”
Berkshire travels to Jefferson on Aug. 27.
“They’re starting to accept their roles,” Prots said. “Ava didn’t see a lot of time last year; Delana (Kellogg) and Maddie (Bower) in the back row are starting to catch up to what’s going on. Hannah (Hutchinson) also split time last year; now she’s got that spot and has a chance to get more swings.”
