ASHTABULA–Edgewood continued its strong start this season with a 3-1 nonconference win over visiting Kirtland on Monday.
The Warriors won the first two sets, 25-14, 25-22, before dropping the third, 17-25. Edgewood regrouped and ended the match with a 25-16 win in the fourth set.
“One thing I can compliment Kirtland on is that no matter what, those girls stayed together,” said Edgewood head coach Kyra Vencill. “That’s something we must also do; we sometimes get down on ourselves. We made a few mistakes in our serve-receive; we just have to learn to shake those things off. We had a hard time with that tonight.”
Edgewood jumped out to a comfortable 17-8 lead in the first set before closing the deal with an Addy Lamson kill off a Summer Mathews set.
The Warriors were up 8-2 in the second set, but Kirtland was able to close the gap over time, cutting its deficit to 18-16.
Luci Paolillo’s service ace closed out the set.
It was all Hornets in set three, as they obtained their largest lead of eight up 19-11 before a hitting error gave Kirtland its first set win of the night.
Edgewood rebounded well, in winning set four, but it took the Warriors a moment to get the engine firing again.
Kirtland was up 12-10 before Edgewood turned it on, going on a 15-4 run to close out its win.
The biggest catalyst for the success of Edgewood tonight was the front row, with Faith Vencill leading the way with 24 kills to pace the attack.
“It makes me happy; we work really hard on our offense,” Vencill said. “We drill it, constantly trying to improve and hit certain spots. We put hula hoops on the floor, trying to hit certain positions. It’s one of the things we work on, and I’m glad to see it pay off.”
Gianna Ianetta had 14 assists, while Luci Paolillo played great defense, racking up 19 digs to keep play alive.
Makenna Rhodes pitched in with eight kills to aid Edgewood in the win.
The Warriors visit defending Chagrin Valley Conference Chagrin Division champion Hawken on Tuesday.
“One of the things we want to do is play harder teams that are out of our conference,” Coach Vencill said. “Hawken is one of those. I talked to their coach at the end of last year about trying to get on their schedule. One of the things I’d like to see is more aggression in our serves. I’d also like to see our serve-receive buttoned up, and we’re making a few mistakes here and there that we need to work on.”
With the loss, Kirtland dropped to 3-2 overall with conference play just a few short weeks away.
“We’re trying to prepare for that,” said Kirtland head coach Ricky Sanders. “We have Chagrin Falls tomorrow, so we’re going to go back to the drawing board tomorrow and work hard. We’ll come out prepared; this game gave us a wake-up call.”
Edgewood’s fast start created problems for the visiting Hornets.
“(Edgewood) surprised us,” Sanders said. “We didn’t realize how well they would play against us, and they looked really good against my defense. Their attack was fast; we didn’t close the block. We pretty much let them dictate set one and two.”
The Hornets’ offense did find life in the back half of set two and all of set three before running out of gas midway through set four.
“In set two, we started to find some rhythm,” Sanders said. “In set three, we came out firing on all cylinders. Once we got to that point, we were able to take care of business.”
Ellie Spencer paced the Kirtland offense with seven kills. Kristiana Katic added four with six blocks. Emma Riebe recorded four blocks.
Kirtland returns to action on Wednesday at Chagrin Falls.
