Bruins trounce JC (09/16/05)

Victories have been hard to come by. Spotting the Bruins 10 points didn’t help.

The Blackford Bruins opened with a 10-0 run Thursday, with six of those points on Jay County errors, and rolled to a 25-11, 25-12, 25-13 volleyball victory over the host Patriots.

“I didn’t think that we were mentally here in the beginning,” said JCHS coach Larry Hinshaw, whose team dropped to 4-14. “And I don’t think we played aggressively. I think we played hard, but not aggressively.”

Jay County had all kinds of problems in the early going after Blackford senior Laura Borgenheimer started the match with an ace off the arms of Ashley Horn. She would add two more aces as the Bruins (15-5) scored 10 points with her behind the service line despite the Patriots taking a pair of timeouts.

Borgenheimer finally had to give up the ball after a Kerbi Elwood attack went into the net. However, Blackford got it right back on an Elwood kill and ran its lead all the way to 15-2.

Jay County, which got its second point on a Bruin service error, didn’t earn one of its own until sophomore middle hitter Shelby Rines finally put down a kill on the 18th point of the match.

“We have a bad habit of the first few minutes deciding where we’re going to be at,” said Hinshaw.

The Patriots managed to score back-to-back points just twice in the opening game and eight times in the entire match. Their longest run — four in a row at the end of game one —came with a pair of aces from Erica Clark.

“I thought we played pretty well,” said Blackford coach Kim Stump. “I thought we passed the ball well, kept the ball in play. We got to play a lot of people in different positions they normally don’t get to play. It was a fun night.”

The lone Jay County advantage of the night came at 1-0 in game two. But Blackford pushed to leads of 7-2, 10-3 and 14-4 and stayed in command the rest of the way.

The Bruins opened up a 9-2 lead in the third game, and eventually finished the match when a Theresa Reinhart attack went into the net.

Senior Lyndsey Osborn paced Blackford with 11 kills and two blocks. Kasey Michael had 30 assists, and Samantha West totaled 15 digs.

Elwood finished with six kills, and Emily Thurman matched Osborn with a couple of blocks.

“At least three people I got to see what they could do at positions I’ve been wanting to try them at — Jessica Atkinson at left, Elwood at right and then it’s always nice to have somebody come in and set the ball just in case your setter goes down,” said Stump. “We hope that never happens, but you never can tell when it might.”

Clark scored a third of the Patriots’ service points with four aces. She also had 10 assists.

Kelly Sautbine, Markie Runyon and Shelby Rines each finished with three kills. Reinhart had five digs, and Sautbine added three digs.

“Some of the things we’ve been working on all week we didn’t see (tonight),” said Hinshaw. “Right now it’s our little things — when the option is there, swing hard, if not, look for the hole. ...

“It’s just a lot of little things.”

Junior varsity

Jay County stayed close in the opening game, but also lost to Blackford Thursday 25-21, 25-15.

The Bruins broke a 4-4 tie in game one with four straight points, then pushed the advantage to 13-8. Jay County rallied back to tie the game at 19-19 on a Lindsey Current kill, but Blackford followed with a 5-0 run en route to the win.

The Patriots fell behind 17-8 in game two and could not rally.

Sharon Dirksen finished with team highs of five assists and two digs. Julie Alig had five kills, and Sarah Westgerdes followed with four.[[In-content Ad]]