Girls volleyball: Harvest Christian will play for 2A sectional title
BYRON - Harvest Christian got off to the perfect start and never looked back.
The No. 2 seed Lions broke out to a commanding 7-1 opening set lead against a jittery top-seeded Dakota squad and cruised to a 25-15, 25-18 victory in Tuesday night's Class 2A Byron girls volleyball sectional semifinal.
Harvest Christian (28-10) advanced to face Keith Country Day (36-2) in Thursday's sectional championship. The Cougars, Class 1A champions in 2012, 2013 and 2014, defeated the Lions in a competitive 25-22, 25-21 match October 20.
With its tallest player standing just 5-foot-9, Dakota (25-11-2) didn't have an answer for Harvest Christian's 6-foot-2 senior Mikayla Robinson, who racked up 8 of her match-high 13 kills in the opening set.
"We kind of rode Mikayla Robinson the first ten points of the game and she gave us a lot of big swings," said Lions coach Mike Bui. "I don't think Dakota has seen a hitter like her and she was able to hit over them."
"We wanted to start out with a lot of confidence and we were able to do that," said Robinson, a South Carolina recruit.
Dakota climbed back within 16-11 in the opening set, but consecutive kills from Rylee Boldog and Amanda Cassidy put the Lions back on track. Robinson and Madison Pfister landed kills to close out the set.
Sophomore setter Kaitlin Murray (29 assists) continued to get everyone involved in the second set as the Lions slowly pulled away.
"For being a sophomore, she did a phenomenal job running our offense today," Bui said. "We noticed Dakota was cheating their middles to block Mikayla, so we were able to run our middles a little more in the second game."
"We want to get the middles involved so we can get teams out of their blocking system," Robinson said.
Hannah Griffith (6 kills, 2 blocks) and Cassidy (5 kills) helped push the lead to 22-13 before Dakota put together a 5-1 run. Robinson re-entered and landed a pair of booming kills to seal the match.
"I think we got a little careless at the end, so I called that late timeout to remind them that we still had a long way to go to close it out," Bui said.
The Lions know they are stepping up in class against Keith Country Day, convincing 25-14, 25-15 winners over Fulton in the opening semifinal match.
"They're a very well-balanced team and Zoe (Nunez) is one of the best setters in the country," credited Bui. "It's going to take a lot from us to win that match, but I think we're ready for the challenge."
"I think we can beat them if we play with amount of confidence we did tonight and the match before," Robinson added.