Center Grove’s Anabelle Schembra sets the ball during Wednesday’s match at Franklin.
Chris Williams | For the Daily Journal
Take Center Grove out of the equation, and Franklin is having a volleyball season for the ages, winning all 21 of its other matches and dropping just six sets across those wins.
Unfortunately for the Grizzly Cubs, the Class 4A No. 7 Trojans are on the schedule. Twice, as it turns out — with the second meeting between the two local powers coming Wednesday evening in the first round of the Johnson County tournament.
Each set was closely contested, as is almost always the case in this rivalry, but the visiting Trojans were able to execute down the stretch every time to secure a 25-20, 25-22, 27-25 triumph, their second sweep in Franklin’s gym over the last five weeks.
“We really just had to keep our consistency up with our attacking and our passing, and I feel like that’s just what we did,” said Center Grove senior Ellen Zapp, who finished with a match-high 21 kills. “We got our good passes, and then we could spread out our offense and we were able to just put the ball away.”
Center Grove (20-5) punched its ticket forward into Thursday’s semifinal round at Edinburgh, where it will meet Indian Creek. The Braves rolled to a 25-20, 25-19, 25-8 win at Greenwood in their tourney opener on Wednesday.
The Trojans and Grizzly Cubs battled back and forth through the first half of their opening set, with four deadlocks and a pair of lead changes, before Center Grove surged ahead. Zapp broke a 13-13 tie with consecutive kills down the line, classmate Reese Dunkle registered a kill from the back row and Zapp hammered another one down just inside the sideline to make it a four-point Trojan lead and force a Grizzly Cub timeout.
Franklin (21-2) got back within one on several occasions, the last at 21-20 on an Ava Lilly block, but a pair of errors put the home side back in a three-point hole before a Kaylen Plunkard ace and a block by Dunkle and Anabelle Schembra closed it out.
In the second set, the Grizzly Cubs rallied out of an early four-point hole to tie it at 6-6 and 7-7 on Aubrey Runyon kills, but Center Grove scored six of the next seven points, using a back-row kill from Zapp and another ace from Plunkard to pull ahead 13-8. A rash of service errors, including three in a row, prevented the Trojans from putting the set out of reach, and Franklin used a 7-1 run to claw back within one at 19-18.
A Maggie Doty service ace pulled the Grizzly Cubs even at 21-21, but a Dunkle ace and three Zapp kills allowed the visitors to again come out on top and take a two-set lead.
Center Grove reeled off five points in a row to get some breathing room in the third at 14-8. After Franklin got it as close as 17-15, Zapp delivered yet another kill from the back row to ignite a 5-0 spurt that was beginning to look like the end of the match — but two Trojan attacking errors, followed by back-to-back aces from Grizzly Cub setter Karlin Burton, tightened it back up to 23-21.
The Grizzly Cubs then fought off four match points and tied it twice — first at 24-24 on a Kate Pinnick ace and then at 25-25 on a Rose Mahin kill — before Zapp’s final kill of the evening and a Schembra ace helped the Trojans finally put it away.
“I was really hoping to finish a little sooner in that third set, just really close it out,” Hawk said. “But it’s a learning moment. We had a similar scenario on Monday (against Jennings County) where we let a third one slip away and we didn’t finish it … so I love seeing progress like that. It’s just always a battle.”
Franklin coach Pat Carlson thought his team played better than it did in the first meeting on Sept. 5, especially in the passing department, even if the result was the same. Half of the 12 sets the Grizzly Cubs have lost this fall have been against Center Grove.
“We’ve just got to figure out how to get over the hump a little bit when it comes to a really talented team,” Carlson said. “They’re our measuring stick right now for who we’ve played and what we have to get past. We keep having big visions and big goals, and keep going forward on that; that’s the best we can do.”
Dunkle had eight kills and had a hand in six blocks for the Trojans, while senior libero Maddi Higginson pulled up the 1,000th dig of her career. For Franklin, Mahin finished with 11 kills and Runyon eight.
On the other side of the bracket, Greenwood Christian earned a 25-15, 25-22, 25-23 victory at Whiteland to advance into a semifinal match against the host Lancers, who drew a first-round bye. The winner of that match will face the Center Grove-Indian Creek winner for the title immediately following the semis.
The Trojans will be heavily favored going into each match Thursday, but they feel well equipped to guard against complacency.
“We just need to stay 100% focused,” Zapp said. “Focusing in on what we can do and playing at our pace is what’s going to finish it out for us.”
