Jacobs comes up aces vs. Dundee-Crown

The Jacobs girls volleyball team held all the cards against visiting Dundee-Crown Tuesday night, particularly the aces.

The Golden Eagles scored 13 of their 50 points via the ace to breeze to their first victory in the Valley Division of the Fox Valley Conference, 25-16, 25-16.

Leading the way from the service line for Jacobs (4-12, 1-2) were freshman Alyssa Erhardt (6 aces), junior outside hitter Taylor Lesner (4), and sophomore middle blocker Nikki Madoch (3).

"We served strong today," Erhardt said. "We had a lot less errors (8) than usual. (Coach Lisa) Dwyer tells me where to put the jump serve, then I mostly just try to hit a good serve and make it strong. It definitely feels good because they're our big rival."

After Jacobs junior setter Quinn Luehring closed out Game 1 with an ace, Erhardt stepped to the service line with a 1-0 lead in Game 2 and kept the serve-receive of Dundee-Crown (4-7, 0-3) reeling. The outside hitter jump-served 4 aces in a row, forcing Chargers coach Tracy Williams to call timeout already facing a 5-0 deficit.

"With (Erhardt) being young we said, 'Hey, now you come out of that timeout and put the next serve in.'" Dwyer said. "That's one thing she's been working on quite a bit."

Erhardt executed as her coach instructed, sending another serve plunging in front of Dundee-Crown's back row to stake the Golden Eagles to a 6-0 lead. The Chargers' problems extended beyond difficulty handling serves, however.

"It wasn't just serve-receive it was all ball control," Williams said. "You're never going to get any kind of offense going when you can't pass the ball. It's as simple as that. We have to work on our ball control.

"We played so well against (Crystal Lake) South when we played them on Thursday. We had great ball control, we played good defense, the serve-receive was good. Then we come over here and it looks like we've never played the game of volleyball before, so it's beyond me."

Erhardt and Luehring (15 assists) hit their stride in Game 2. The 5-foot-10 freshman spiked Luehring's sets to give Jacobs leads of 12-6, 13-7, 18-6 and 24-16 on her way to a match-high 9 kills.

Jacobs senior middle blocker Brittany White closed out the match with a block kill.

Madoch contributed 3 aces, 3 kills and 2 blocks, junior Elise Charron had 4 kills and Lesner finished with 3 kills.

Katie Cutinello notched 4 kills to lead Dundee-Crown.