Greenfield-Central’s Makenna Rankins (2) reacts after losing a long rally point to Pendleton Heights during their IHSAA Girls Volleyball Class 4A Sectional 9 semifinal Saturday at Yorktown High School.
Rob Baker | For The Daily Reporter
By Brady Extin | Daily Reporter
YORKTOWN — The youthfulness of Greenfield-Central reared its head on Saturday morning in the IHSAA Girls Volleyball Class 4A Sectional 9 semifinals held at Yorktown High School.
Against a Pendleton Heights team with four starting seniors, the Cougars fell in straight sets, 25-18, 25-22, 25-16.
“Pendleton played very well. They were very on tune,” Greenfield-Central head coach Jon Vernon said. “Their serving was great, and we did not serve receive as well as we have been. Credit to them, because I thought they played extremely well.”
The Cougars had only two seniors on this year’s roster, and only one senior starter.
“We had been playing really well for the past two weeks,” Vernon said. “We’re still a young team, so I just think the bigness of the event overwhelmed them a bit at the beginning. I think a little bit of our youthfulness just got to us while we were playing, and that showed throughout the match.”
In all three sets, the Cougars found themselves down early. In set one, Pendleton Heights jumped out to a 7-1 lead, in set two 5-0, and in set three 4-0. Playing from behind was something Vernon wanted his team to avoid.
“We talked all week about how they needed to not get on runs. I just felt like we were playing catch up all day long and just battling uphill,” Vernon said. “We were always playing four, five, six points behind, and even calling timeouts we just couldn’t stop their runs.”
A direct effect from having to play from behind, was the amount of unforced errors by the Cougars. Whether serving errors, net interferences, or miscommunications, the Cougars were plagued with unforced mistakes the entire day. 13 attack errors, 10 serve errors, and seven serve receiving errors, contributed to the Pendleton Heights victory.
“I told our kids that the good thing we did the other night against New Pal was that we didn’t have multiple sets of unforced errors. We would have four or five good serves in a row, and then one bad one,” Vernon said. “Today, it seemed like we were just in an uphill battle all day. We just have to learn how to play in a system, and hopefully the experience will help them out and be better for next year.”
Doing her best to keep the Cougars in the match was junior outside hitter Mya Grigsby.
She finished her day with 13 kills, with seven of them coming in the first set. She added one ace, and eight digs to round out her stat line.
Following her on the stat sheet were three sophomores — Rilee Roland, Harper Holden and Makenna Rankins.
Roland added seven kills, an ace and five digs, while Holden finished with six kills and two aces. Rankins led the team with 28 assists.
On a season in which they finished 14-17 and 1-6 in the Hoosier Heritage Conference, it’s that youthfulness — although the Cougars’ downfall this season — that makes Vernon expect good things going forward.
“I just got done telling them in the locker room that we overachieved a little bit this season. I thought that we were still one year away with how many young kids we have on the team. You’ve got to give credit to them. They’ve had a lot of change in the last couple of years, and now it’s just a case where we are still a year away,” Vernon said. “We just have to build on this. I’m just happy that we got past the first round of sectional, and we had our chances to go to the championship. The main point is that we just have to progress and keep getting better.”
