GREENFIELD — A night of playing catch up ended in three sets for Greenfield-Central’s volleyball team on Wednesday.
“I felt we had to play chase all night, tonight,” Greenfield-Central coach Ron Heck said.
The Cougars suffered their first loss of the season — falling to 2-1 overall — to Westfield, losing 3-0 by set scores of 25-19, 27-25, 25-19. The Shamrocks improved to 2-1.
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Greenfield-Central got behind early in each set. They rallied in the first two to take short-lived leads, but weren’t able to close out against a talented Westfield club.
“What put us behind was our serve receive. That put us behind the eight-ball in all three sets,” Heck said. “And, their defense was reading every attack we were able to put across the net. Our defense was a step, step-and-a-half behind. We were just not reading what our opponents were presenting to us.”
In the first set, Westfield scored 13 times on Greenfield-Central errors, which included errors on serve receive, attacks and other ball-handling miscues. In the second, the Shamrocks opened with a 3-0 lead, all three on service aces.
In both sets, Greenfield-Central made comebacks. In the first, the Cougars trailed by four early, 8-4, but came back to lead twice. A Molly Schwarzkopf kill tied the set, 9-9, and back-to-back kills from Brooke Herrell and Ava Antic gave them an 11-9 lead, but the next four points went to the Shamrocks, all on Cougar attack errors.
After an Antic kill, Greenfield-Central led 15-14, but the Shamrocks finished by scoring 11 of the final 15 points.
The deficit was five, 11-6, in the second before the Cougars could get their offense moving. Herrell led the attack. She finished with nine kills on 18 attempts in the set. Her eighth finish put the Cougars up 23-21, but the Shamrocks were able to tie and later finish to take control of the match, 2-0.
The third set was the roughest. Greenfield-Central trailed as much as 19-6. Again, the Cougars showed some fight, but the deficit was too much to overcome.
“We talk a lot about playing for each other and not just playing for yourself and being 12-strong and not be on six separate islands on the court,” assistant coach Paige Heck added. “When we’re playing like a family, that was definitely part of our fight (when we made our comebacks).”
Herrell finished with a team-high 15 kills. Antic had nine. Three Cougars had double figures in digs, led by libero Marissa Grigsby with 22. Morgan Hornaday had 15 and Makayla Price finished with 14. Setters Ali Knecht and Hornaday had 17 and 16 assists, respectively.
Westfield’s defensive reading was well noted by Heck in his team’s ratio of assists to the Shamrocks digs/blocks. Greenfield-Central had 33 assists to Westfield’s 46 denials.
“I knew coming in, Westfield was going to be the team that was on the court tonight,” Ron Heck added. “They came in (with us beating them the last two years) with a little fight to pick. Bottom line, they wanted it more than us. They were faster than us on both ends of the net, offensively and defensively. We could not match their speed and their focus.”
Greenfield-Central is back in action Saturday with a noon contest at Greenwood Christian Academy. The Cougars return home for back-to-back contests on Tuesday, against Connersville, and Wednesday, against Richmond.
