Girls volleyball: Burlington Central falls to DeKalb
The record may not be an accurate reflection of how much improvement Burlington Central's girls volleyball team has shown over the first two weeks of the season.
While the Rockets slipped to 0-8 following Thursday night's 26-24, 25-21 nonconference loss to visiting DeKalb, BC coach Meghan Blahnik continued focusing on the positives.
"It's still early," said Blahnik, whose roster includes just 2 seniors - Summer Smith and Lexi DeWaard. "You can see the inexperience level as far as the speed of play and type of play. It's getting better. There has been a ton of improvement from the beginning of the season.
"We'll get there. It has taken us a little bit of time. We're getting better every day."
Against DeKalb (2-0), the Rockets jumped out to a 10-8 lead as Smith recorded 3 of her 5 kills early in the opening set.
Trailing 15-13, Burlington Central scored 3 straight points, highlighted by an ace from DeWaard (3 aces, 2 kills), to retake a 16-15 advantage.
From there, the set featured 6 more ties - the last coming at 24-24 via a DeKalb hitting error before the Barbs prevailed on back-to-back middle kills from junior Jasmine Kemp (3 kills).
"The first set was really competitive the whole way," said Blahnik. "We missed four or five serves (5) in the first set - which killed us. I don't think we served as aggressively as we needed to."
In the second set, another phase of the game proved lethal for the Rockets.
Nine of the Rockets' 11 hitting errors enabled the Barbs to build an 18-9 lead.
"In the second set, we cleaned up our service errors and then we decided to swap it with hitting errors," said Blahnik.
However, the Rockets didn't give in.
Led by junior Madison Leone (team-high 6 kills), Burlington Central went on an 8-3 run, capped by an ace from junior Gabriela Soto (2 aces) to draw within 21-17.
The Rockets continued to make things interesting, closing the gap to 23-21 on a DeKalb hitting error, but a hitting miscue and block from Kemp sealed the deal.
"We made a really good comeback," said Blahnik. "It's just hard at that stage of the game to have to stage a comeback against a strong team."
Junior outside hitter Hannah Oehlberg recorded a match-high 7 kills for the Barbs.
"She has been great at practice," DeKalb coach Jamie DiMaggio said of Oehlberg. "She has really been breaking through, getting more confident and taking hard swings."
Oehlberg added 2 of the Barbs' 5 aces while Brittany Parks had a pair of kills and an ace.
"I was happy with our serving," said DiMaggio. "Our hitters were also going after it tonight."
Freshman Kathryn Schmidt contributed 3 kills for the Rockets, while DeWaard and Soto each added 7 assists.
"They're kind of down on themselves right now but I feel like once we get that first win, we'll start going," Smith said of the team's junior-laden squad.