Marian Central downs St. Edward

St. Edward’s girls volleyball team has had some trouble with its serve receive this season.

Marian Central dominates the serve.

The Hurricanes used the momentum off the serve to take control of Wednesday’s Suburban Christian Conference crossover match, winning 25-11, 25-18 in Woodstock.

“Serve receive is our biggest downfall,” St. Edward coach Jaime Dovichi said. “When we can’t get anything going with our serve receive, our confidence level drops. We get really down on ourselves.”

St. Edward (11-6) hung close through the first 9 points, but then ran into one of the Hurricanes’ most dangerous servers. Tara Blake notched 3 of her 4 aces during a 9-0 run to put Marian Central (10-4) up 18-9.

When Blake wasn’t doing the damage with her serves, Emma Hussey was hurting the Green Wave at the net. Hussey had a pair of blocks and 2 kills at the net during the Hurricanes’ 14-2 run to close out Game 1.

But for all of the damage done during the first game, St. Edward was able to bounce back during Game 2.

The Green Wave took a 10-9 lead off a hitting error by Marian Central. The lead was the first for St. Edward since a 2-1 advantage during the match’s opening points. Rena Ranallo previously smacked a pair of aces of her own to bring the Green Wave back from down 9-4. Ranallo finished the match with 5 kills and 3 aces.

After breaking a 12-all tie, Marian Central began to pull away with a block and kill from Meredith Patterson (7 kills, 4 blocks) to go up 16-12.

The Hurricanes closed the match out with a series of hitting errors from the Green Wave, most coming off the serve.

“It’s one of the aspects of our game, we’ve been trying to focus on,” Marian Central coach Laura Watling said. “One of the areas we try to focus on is aggressive serving. We have some phenomenal servers.”

St. Edward was able to battle back in the second game thanks in part to its defense. Libero Allison Kruk led the Green Wave with 9 digs and Katie Ayello (12 assists) added 7. Once the defense was getting the ball play in play, the offense began to run its sets.

Sophomore Katie Swanson recorded 5 kills and Sarah Norman finished with 3.

“Once we were able to run our offense, we got our confidence back,” Dovichi said. “We dug a couple of balls, so our defense started to pick up. They always had big guns up front and we weren’t able to stop them.”

Marian Central’s Abby Gilleland finished with 14 assists and 2 aces.