Batavia sweeps York
With four-year starting middle Kristen Koncelik getting York’s full attention in the second semifinal at the Class 4A Batavia regional Tuesday night, the Bulldogs picked a good time to show off their depth.
The Evansville-bound Koncelik still put away 7 kills, and she got plenty of help from Heather Meyer (8 kills) and Shea Stanley (6 kills).
Anysa Ocon added 3 kills and combined with Shea Thayer for 3 blocks, while setter Audrey Faulhaber mixed up the attack with 21 assists and Batavia defended its home court with a 25-14, 25-21 victory.
“We had a few more weapons than they had,” Batavia coach Trippi-Payne said. “That kind of made the difference.
“That’s a big win for us. Nice to get it on our home floor and get the opportunity to play on our home floor again. It certainly would not be (nice) to be a site manager and not playing on Thursday.”
No. 8 seed Batavia (20-16) will indeed play again at home against second seed Geneva (27-9) at 6 p.m. Thursday for the regional championship and a spot in next week’s Larkin sectional.
The Vikings defeated the Bulldogs 25-15, 25-16 in Upstate Eight Conference play.
“We didn’t play our best match (against Geneva) and they played really well so we really wanted to get out there and have another shot at it,” Batavia junior libero Jessica Hartmann said.
Hartmann came through in the first game. With Batavia leading 16-14 in what had been a tight game to that point, Hartmann rattled off 9 straight points to end it.
“She had a nice run and we were blocking and playing defense behind her,” Trippi-Payne said. “We had a few good defensive sequences and she also got them out of system quite a bit. Her serve was really, really tough.”
Hartmann also had 6 digs, second on the team to Maddie Jaudon’s 8.
“I knew we had to get something going, it was a really close game and both teams were playing really well,” Hartmann said. “Trippi was giving me a zone and I kept on hitting it.”
No. 10 seed York (14-20) led early in Game 2. Batavia caught the Dukes at 10-10, went ahead on a Koncelik kill and was up 23-18 before one last York surge.
The Dukes scored three straight to get the momentum and were in the middle of a long point before Stanley fired a winner for a 24-21 lead. The Dukes’ serve-receive then broke down on match point.
“When you have middles and right side all firing it makes it easier on the outsides to do that kind of job,” Trippi-Payne said. “We definitely were spreading it around.”
Melissa Deatsch, the lone York player left from when the Dukes beat Batavia in the 2010 sectional semifinals, led her team with 11 kills.
“We’ve just been playing up and down all year,” York coach Patty Iverson said. “We closed out the block on the line and they burned us cross court. Our block wasn’t effective, we were getting tooled too much. The big difference was handling the outside. That really hurt us and they played very nicely.”