Center Grove players react after beating Franklin to win the Johnson County tournament title last month.
Daily Journal file photo
Through all of the rough patches, Center Grove volleyball coach Jennifer Hawk and her players remained hopeful.
We’ve got until October to figure it out, they told themselves. We’ll get there by then.
October is here, and that combination of patience and confidence appears to be paying dividends. After a rocky start that saw the team’s record hovering below .500 for much of the regular season, Center Grove got its groove back in mid-September and got hot, winning seven of eight at one point and getting the arrow pointed in the right direction at the right time.
That arrow was pointing elsewhere early on, as the Trojans dropped to 5-9 after a rough stretch in late August and early September that included a five-match losing streak — two of those straight-set defeats against a Franklin team it hadn’t lost to in almost a decade.
Many of the team’s question marks revolved around who was going to finish offensively — the only two seniors on last year’s roster, Katie Egenolf and Avery Holubar, accounted for more than half of the Trojans’ kills.
“I still think at that point we were finding our identity a little bit,” Hawk said of the team’s early struggles. “Who were going to be our go-to people? Who was going to score? We lost so much offense last year, so we were still figuring out — are we going to run a 6-2, are we going to run a 5-1? If we’re running with one setter, who is it? Just a lot of pieces we were trying to figure out.”
The incumbent setter, senior Malia Schembra-Owen, has been splitting those duties this fall with junior Emma Leavitt. Those two have had to develop a connection with a different array of hitters. Sophomore Ellen Zapp, who contributed 68 kills as a freshman, has a team-high 261 this season. Middle blocker Reese Dunkle, another sophomore, went from 101 kills to 234. Junior Sophia Sabol, a defensive specialist last year, has put away 223 kills while taking on a much more prominent all-around role.
Eventually, all of those pieces started to click — and the big turning point came in a Sept. 12 match against Brownsburg, who was the No. 6 team in Class 4A at the time and is currently eighth. The Trojans, who came into that match with a 7-11 record, put together a 25-22, 25-23, 25-22 sweep.
That victory not only sparked a run of seven wins in eight matches — the lone blemish a 2-1 tournament loss against 4A No. 11 Cathedral — but it also showed Center Grove what it’s capable of.
“That set a standard for us for the rest of the games,” Sabol said. “Like, ‘we’re playing bad? We beat Brownsburg; that’s how good we can play.’”
“If you’re feeling good about yourself, it’ll carry over and earn you a few extra points here and there that eventually keep you on top,” Hawk added.
One of the biggest reasons for the midseason turnaround is that the Trojans stopped giving points away with unforced errors, a by-product of the gradual improvements in chemistry.
“We started cleaning up our errors and playing more as a team than as individuals,” senior middle blocker Julianna Weems said. “I know I can trust my team and I know they’re going to play their hardest. That just gives me my confidence.”
Center Grove lost three of its last five regular-season matches, but they weren’t exactly facing cupcakes — the setbacks came against Hamilton Southeastern, Yorktown and Noblesville, who enter this week’s sectionals ranked first, third and 14th in Class 4A.
Eventually, the Trojans are going to have to beat that caliber of team if they want to extend their season into the final weekend of October; the trick, Hawk says, is maintaining the cleaned-up play while also becoming a bit more explosive.
“We’ve learned how to limit errors. Now it’s limit and still score,” the coach explained. “We only had one more error than Yorktown did, but they just scored a lot more. So now we have to find a balance. They’ve done a really good job of cleaning up their game and not giving away points; now it’s just finding a way to earn them as well. Because we’ll see better teams, and they’re not going to give you anything, so you really do have to earn it.”
What should help Center Grove is already having the knowledge that it can beat highly-rated teams.
Knowing, after all, is half the battle.
We know how good of a team we can be, and that’s what it’s going to take to beat these teams in our sectional,” Sabol said. “We’ve worked really hard in practice, and we’ve had games that have shown that we can just dominate this sectional, so we just need to come in with that mindset.”
IF YOU GO
Class 4A Bloomington South Sectional
Thursday
Greenwood vs. Center Grove, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday
Greenwood/Center Grove vs. Bloomington South, 1 p.m.
Championship, 6 p.m.
Class 4A Columbus East Sectional
Thursday
Franklin vs. East Central, 6 p.m.
Whiteland vs. Columbus East, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday
Franklin/East Central vs. Columbus North, 11 a.m.
Whiteland/Columbus East vs. Shelbyville, 1 p.m.
Championship, 6 p.m.
Class 3A Edgewood Sectional
Thursday
Indian Creek vs. West Vigo, 7 p.m.
Saturday
Brown County vs. Indian Creek/West Vigo, 10 a.m.
Championship, 6 p.m.
Class A Central Christian Sectional
Saturday
Greenwood Christian vs. Victory College Prep/Providence Cristo Rey, 11 a.m.
Championship, 6 p.m.
Class A Waldron Sectional
Saturday
Edinburgh vs. Oldenburg Academy/Morristown, 11 a.m.
Championship, 6 p.m.
