Win slips away

It’s one thing for a team to feel it could have won.

Should have is a different story.

The Patriots walked away Thursday feeling they let one get away.

Jay County High School’s volleyball team was up two sets to one, having controlled the third throughout. It had an 8-2 lead in the fourth. It just could not hold in a 22-25, 25-15, 18-25, 25-22, 15-10 loss to the visiting Delta Eagles.

Some key mistakes kept the Patriots (1-1) from coming through in the fifth set.

But they feel the match never should have gotten that far.

“We should have won it in game four," said JCHS coach Amy Dillon, whose team has lost five in a row to the Eagles. “It was what, 11-6?

“And then we just let them creep back in.

“I told the girls in that timeout that at that point I felt like we were trying to play safe and play not to lose instead of playing to win. And we started tipping and slowing down our offense a little bit, and it just that killed us.”

The Patriots were still up 14-10 in the fourth set before a Kate Manor service run pushed Delta (2-0) ahead. They pushed back ahead twice, but fell behind for good — in both the set and the match — on a kill from Eagle freshman Amira Wilson. Consecutive aces from Paislee Terry followed, and Kyra Murry eventually ended the set with a tip to the short left corner.

Jay County fell behind 4-1 in the fifth set and led just once — 7-6 — as the Eagles recorded their second five-set win in as many matches. (They opened the season with a 26-24, 20-25, 20-25, 25-22, 15-13 victory at Wapahani.) It got a brief reprieve when Terry smacked an attack into the net, but the visitors put the match away on a Murry tip followed by a final Terry kill.

“We are learning a lot about the flow of the game, and so when we run in the middle, run the middle, run the middle and we swing hard, learning to change up the pace,” said Johnson, who got 23 kills from Murry to go along with 21 from Terry. “Defenders make changes, and then we need to throw in a tip or we need to throw in a throw. … Just learning how those defenders are going to adjust, that's super important because we're not giants.”

A more varied attack was effective for the Patriots, especially in the first and third sets. 

The opener was tight throughout, with Maria Hemmelgarn forging a tie at 22 when she rolled a kill over the Delta block. The visitors didn’t score again, recording a pair of attack errors before Carly Trinidad delivered an ace off the arms of Murry to end the set.

A 10-1 deficit in the second set buried Jay County, but it flipped the script in the third as it ran out to leads of 8-2 and 15-7. The Eagles were never able to even the score and the home team closed on a 5-0 run that included two DHS errors, kills from Hallie Schwieterman and Brenna Schmiesing and a Lani Muhlenkamp ace.

Three aces — two from Kayla Jetmore and one from Schmiesing — helped stake the Patriots to their early lead in the fourth set before the match got away from them.

“I think that we need to work on being a little bit more mentally tough, and staying in a game and playing to win, not worrying about calls,” said Dillon. “You know, we talked about that Tuesday night. We're beating (Madison-Grant) 25-6 and they're worried about a call. You control what you can control. You can control your attitude. You can control your serves and you can control communication. Don't worry about everything else. … So I think sometimes they let that get to them.”

She added that the Patriots are still in the process of figuring out how to use all of their weapons.

Schwieterman’s 10 kills were the team high Thursday, while Maria Hemmelgarn and Mya Kunkler added nine apiece. Brenna Schmiesing added five kills. And Elizabeth Barnett came through at some key moments, including a kill and a block back to back late in the opening set.

“We've played a lot of different rotations,” said Dillon, who also got 27 assists from Paisley Fugiett, 19 digs from Muhlenkamp and 12 points from Trinidad. “We talked about that in practice last night — do we pick one and build on it or do we have a lot in our arsenal?”

Junior varsity

Jay County stayed with the Eagles but was unable to take a set in a 25-21, 25-20 defeat.

Emery Forthofer paced the Patriot offense with four kills. She also matched teammate Emmalyn Homan for the team bests of five points and two aces.

Gabby Petro came up with six digs. Homan was next with four digs.