Kazmierczak, York top Addison Trail

With a trio of freshmen playing regularly early in this new season, the York girls volleyball team has looked to senior libero Logan Kazmierczak to provide a little veteran leadership.

In Wednesday's 25-14, 25-20 defeat of visiting Addison Trail, the Dukes' youngsters once again had an impact, but once again their senior defensive leader also came up big. Kazmierczak recorded a match-high 8 digs and delivered a calming influence on the young squad, which opened a big lead while easily winning the opener, and then had to hold off a Blazers team that came on strong in the nightcap.

"The freshmen they make up a huge part of our offense and the offense has improved a lot this year," said Kazmierczak, who watched freshman outside Gigi Barr pace the attack with 6 kills. "But defensively we've been working a lot on serve receive. That started out as one of our weak points, but we've worked on it and we've really improved on our serve receive and that's started to come together."

In the first game the Blazers (2-5) were a little sloppy, and York jumped out to leads of 14-2 and 19-7 on its way to the 25-14 win. The second set was much tighter, and Addison Trail trailed just 7-5 following a kill from Nina Muell and later rallied to within 22-19 and 23-20 before the hosts finished off the sweep. Muell and Sam Pociecha sparked the Blazers defense in the second game as several long points were extended while both sides picked up their defense.

"We weren't too pleased about our play in Game 1 just because we weren't forcing York to earn points - it was all errors on our side of the net," said Addison Trail coach Dan Styler. "They were a better team than us tonight. I just think Game 2 we were happy we were able to compete more and stretch longer volleys."

The Dukes improved to 5-2 on the year with the win, and coach Patty Iverson played everyone, including Emily Fleckenstein, Sam Kao and Callan Woolfe, a trio of setters who each got involved in running the offense at times in the match.

"This was good," said Iverson, whose squad dropped a pair of tight battles while settling for fourth place at the Benet Invitational last weekend. "Everybody played, which was great and we've got a lot of depth because we have a lot of kids that are older … I'm just hoping we can solidify a little bit of a lineup and figure out what we're doing."

With Kazmierczak and her fellow upperclassmen leading the way, York already has figured some things out on the court.

"Being a captain along with Emily Schlecht, a right side, we feel responsible to set a good example for all the freshmen," the libero said, "especially since we have such a young team. This year we're trying to be a stable part of the team while we have so many things changing. But we're pretty happy with how we're doing right now."