Center Grove’s volleyball team has started to find its footing of late after a 1-4 start to the season.
Turns out the easiest way to get back on track is to feed your two All-State players the ball when you need a point.
Katie Egenolf finished with 24 kills and Grace Boggess contributed 23 as the Trojans rebounded from a slow start to pick up a 23-25, 26-24, 25-19, 25-22 road win over county rival Franklin on Thursday night.
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Click here to purchase photos from this galleryThe victory was the third in a row for the Trojans (4-4), who also got 51 assists and nine digs from Jenna Otto.
“We were able to run our guns,” Center Grove coach Chris Due said, “but in order to get those kids going, we needed to pick up the ball control, and that’s what I thought we did a better job of.”
Franklin never trailed during a first set that saw plenty of errors on both sides of the net, maintaining a lead of between one and five points until a late 5-0 run by the Trojans tied the score at 23-23. Senior Megan Thompson broke that string with a kill, and a Center Grove attacking error on the next point closed the game out. Cami Kelsay had five of her team-high 19 kills in the set for the Grizzly Cubs.
Center Grove came back to even it up in the second, but it took some doing. Down 23-16, Franklin stormed back with seven consecutive points, a run keyed by three Kelsay kills and back-to-back aces by Thompson, to tie it up. The teams traded service errors before consecutive kills from Boggess and Egenolf enabled the Trojans to pull it out. Emily Eck had helped stake the visitors to a sizable lead earlier in the set with five straight service points, three of those on aces.
Boggess got a large share of her kills via tips, repeatedly exploiting a gap on the floor behind the Franklin block.
“I saw the holes, and I was like, ‘That’s a perfect place to put it,’” Boggess said.
The Grizzly Cubs jumped out to an early 9-4 advantage in the third before the Trojans rallied back, again behind Boggess and Egenolf, to gradually take the lead at 16-15. Franklin tied it back up at 18-18 but Center Grove scored seven of the last eight points, closing it out on an ace by senior libero Rylie McMahen.
Despite the number of aces on his team’s stat sheet, Due was not happy with how his team served.
“We missed 18 serves in the match,” he said. “That’s almost a full set. We just gave them a lot of easy points.”
With a chance to end it in the fourth, the Trojans fed their big dogs whenever possible. Egenolf bookended a Boggess tip with a pair of kills midway through to stake the visitors to a 12-6 advantage, and when Franklin made a late run to get as close as 22-20, it was Boggess who put down her final kill of the night to stem the tide.
Center Grove’s victory was completed when the Grizzly Cubs couldn’t return Egenolf’s last attack on match point.
Franklin (2-3), which also dropped its first Mid-State Conference match since 2013 in a five-setter against Perry Meridian, can take away some positives despite another tough loss. The Grizzly Cubs know they’ll see the Trojans again and feel like a victory against their longtime nemesis is within reach.
“I think that we are capable of making adjustments on some things that we did,” Franklin coach Jess Giles said, “so I’m excited to play them again.”
