Jay Co. spikers win invitational

The Jay County High School volleyball team went a perfect 3-0 Saturday to take first place in the Patriot Invitational.
It was the second straight year Jay County won the tournament it hosts.
The Patriots (4-1) handled the Anderson Knights and Marion Giants before taking down the Northeastern Knights, 25-13, 25-17, to finish with an unblemished record. Jay County has not lost a match in the tournament in the last two years.
After struggling against Class 3A No. 4 Delta on Thursday, Jay County strung together service aces and well-placed attacks throughout the tournament.
“(It was a) huge improvement,” said JCHS coach Fred Medler, whose team lost 25-7, 25-12, 25-7 to the Eagles. “We played around with the lineup again.”
“We’re still trying to get everyone playing time so they can show what they can do on the court.”
In the first game against the Knights, Jay County rode the serve of senior Bre McIntire to an 11-4 lead. An attack error gave the Knights the serve back, but three straight kills by Kylie Osborne, Abby Barcus and Abby Wendel shifted the momentum back to the Patriots.
“Bre did an excellent job back there, probably as good as anyone else,” said Medler, who added he told the Patriots to focus on eliminating high-risk serves to get their confidence back. “We just know we have to keep the ball in play to be successful.”
During the tournament, most of the points against Jay were from errors on the Patriots’ part, which Medler attributed to mental mistakes.
“You’ve got earned points and you’ve got unforced errors,” he said. “We were making some unforced errors where the team wasn’t really doing anything to us. We lost a little focus, lost a little concentration and didn’t finish the play out.”
Barcus, a sophomore, led all Patriot hitters with 24 kills for the tournament, including going 8-for-11 attacking against the Knights. She also had a team high in digs with 14.
Osborne was second on the team with 19 kills. McIntire had a team-high 10 aces to go with her 13 kills, and Wendel tallied 13 kills and a dozen digs.
Junior varsity
Jay County’s junior varsity team went 3-0 as it also won the Patriot Invitational. The Patriots’ needed three games to beat Anderson, and then topped the Giants and Knights in straight games.
Britlyn Dues and Emilie Walter paved the way for the Patriot attack with 15 kills each. Dues also added 12 aces and eight digs.
Audrey Shreve recorded 13 kills, and Alli Campbell had 49 assists and 10 digs to go with her 10 aces.