DAYTON – Experience won the day, Saturday at Carroll High School.
While the Carroll and Huber Heights Wayne girls volleyball teams put up a fight in Saturday’s tri-match, it was the Bellbrook Golden Eagles and their six seniors who ruled the day.
The day started with a match between the young Wayne Warriors and the even younger Patriots. Carroll came out with a lot of energy, winning the first game 25-18. But Wayne adjusted and won the next two 25-14, 25-21 to take the match.
“We did okay. We have a lot to work on. We’re a pretty new team with three returning players. This was our first match of the season today,” said Carroll coach Seth Wilson. “We were mostly focusing on our effort and those sort of things. It’s not necessarily the result of the match that I’m worried about. It’s more about how we play. If we play our best, I’m happy. I’m not necessarily worried about the outcome.”
Wilson said his team is still working on the fundamentals and attitude. But he said as long as he sees hard work, then he will be satisfied.
“That’s pretty much what I preach. If we play our best and lose, then we lose. We just want to play hard. We need to work on general things, but they’re a really good group of kids,” he said.
Bellbrook played Wayne in the next match, winning 25-14, 25-18. Although they won in two straight games, Bellbrook coach Lynzee Johnson wasn’t satisfied with how they were playing.
“I thought that we made a lot of errors. That’s going to be our battle. We make a ton of self-errors that are unforced. That makes it so we can’t get to the intensity level that I want to in a game,” she said.
Even though Wayne is young, Johnson said she wasn’t expecting them to roll over.
“Wayne is young, but very athletic. You can’t teach that these days.”
The Patriots put up a tough fight early against Bellbrook before losing the first game 25-20. But everything clicked for the Golden Eagles in the second game, and they made quick work of Carroll, winning 25-6.
“We finally fixed (our mistakes) in our final game. It just took a little while. I told them I was done calling serves. We were missing too many serves and I was done calling serves out and they started serving beautifully,” said Johnson.
Johnson said that she knows how young Carroll is, but she thinks they have talent.
“I know that Carroll is rebuilding this year, they were rebuilding last year, too. But I think that they’ll get there.”
As for her own team, Johnson said the errors will clean themselves up over time.
“I think that they will, and once they do I think it will take our team to another level.”
Bellbrook (3-2) is scheduled to play Brookville at 7 p.m. today at Brookville High School. Carroll (0-2) plays Cincinnati McNicholas today at 7 p.m. at McNicholas High School.
