Redbirds come off deck to defeat Metro East Lutheran
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EDWARDSVILLE – Alton's girls volleyball team had to make a few adjustments going into their second game against Metro East Lutheran at MEL's Hooks Gym Wednesday night.
Adjust they did.
The Redbirds bounced back from a 25-15 first-game loss to the Knights and went on to force a deciding game with a couple of big runs, then had to hold off an eager Knight team playing before a boisterous home crowd in the rubber game to take a 15-25, 25-16, 25-23 win to go to 1-1 on the season coming off a season-opening loss to Columbia Monday night. MEL fell to 0-1 n the young season.
“We definitely had to go out there and make some major adjustments whenever we started the second set,” said Redbird coach Stacey Ferguson. “I think we went out there and shook off the nerves a little bit in the second and third (games) and realized our points we got, we had to battle and work together.
“It's a well-coached team and a great program; the energy level between us is always at that point; any year, it could be one or the other – it was just exciting it was ours this year.”
Having to come off the deck to take the win was a case of doing what the Redbirds needed to do, Ferguson felt. “We didn't to the things we needed to do to earn the point,” Ferguson said. “We made our own mistakes, we were waiting for them to make mistakes and we decided the second and third games if we were going to get points, we were going to have to earn them, shake things up, talk a lot better on the court.”
“Alton definitely elevated in the second game,” said Knight coach Jon Giordano, “and I felt we stayed about the same unfortunately. We talked in between games that exactly was going to happen but we did not clean up our passing as much as we needed to in that second game and much of the third game.
“I thought our digging was very good, but our serve receive was very suspect tonight. I thought Ellen (Schulte) and Taylor (Bradley) did a wonderful job tonight in the middle; I was very pleased with our offense – we just needed to feed them more consistently, as well as our outsides too.”
Game 2 started out fairly evenly before the Redbirds got hot and went on a run that saw them score nine of the next 10 points from 1-1 to take an 11-2 lead before the Knights rallied to cut the lead to 11-6 before cutting the lead again to 13-10. Alton then went on a mini-run to take the lead to 16-10 before MEL scored twice, then the Redbirds exploded for eight of the next nine points to forge ahead to 24-13 to essentially put the game away, with a long MEL serve giving AHS the win to force a Game 3.
The final game was nip-and-tuck all the way through, neither team getting out to more than a three-point lead before Alton managed to get ahead by 20-15 in the late going of the game, seemingly putting the match out of MEL's reach; the Knights responded with a five-point run to even things up at 20-20 and eventually managed to grab a 23-22 lead. Alton responded to that by scoring the final three points of the game to take the win.
Next up for the Redbirds is a road trip to Fort Zumwalt South at 5:45 p.m. Aug. 29 while the Knights' next matches come this weekend at a tournament at Springfield Lutheran.
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