Second IHSAA opponent; second win

Arrggghhhh!!!

Thought I ought to start with that, since we played the Pirates tonight.

Yes, we traveled to Merrillville tonight to play the Pirates and came a away with one of the following: 1)their first win; 2) their third win or 3) their fourth win. It was their first regular season win if you count Saturday's games as a tournament. It was their third win if you count Saturday's games as regular games. It was their fourth if you look at Maxpreps. Victory included the game against our JV as a varsity game, so it shows up as as a varsity game for us as well.

We beat Merrillville twice last year, once 3-1 in a a regular season match and 2-1 in the Kankakee Valley tournament. As I remember, they were a somewhat disorganized team with some good offense. This year they were quite different - very good defense and not much offense. Their offense was the disorganized part of their game, but their digging was good. We jumped out to an early lead behind hits by Taylor and Faith and a defensive error, but Merrillville tied it at three. We continued the good hitting but were making a lot of errors and Merrillville stayed even for a while. At 6-6 Lauren got a kill followed by a nice dink by Ally. Calumet added to the lead from there, pushing it to five at 13-8. After three consecutive errors by our girls, they got it back together and stretched the lead to 18-11. A nice tandem block by Faith and Lauren made it 23-13, we made an error and Lauren got a kill. 24-14, game point. And then a LGFS. Six straight from Merrilleville before they served one out and the first game was finally ours, 25-20.

Game 2 was a mirror image of game 1, at least for a while. The Patriots opened up a little lead, Merrillville brought it back to even. This time, however, MHS kept it going. A dink followed by a two nice blocks gave them a three point lead. We tied it at 11, and it stayed a one or two point game until a MHS ace and dink kill put them ahead 20-17. We evened it up again at 22 with kills from Lauren and Taylor sandwiched around a Faith ace. The teams traded points to 25, then Taylor decided it was time be done, finishing it with consecutive kills.

The third game saw MHS get the first two points, and then it was even for a while. Two MHS errors plus a dink kill by Ally made it 12-9. A little bit later two Calumet errors brought MHS to within 1, but from there it was all Patriots. Four Faith kills, including the clincher, gave Calumet the game, 25-16.

My reports were that the girls won both games tonight, easily defeating Lakeshore Thunder 25-5, 25-9 and 25-13. The match against Crossroads was tough as expected, with the girls needing four games to defeat them. The scores, I believe, were 25-13, 25-18, 20-25, and 25-14. I'm not sure about the last game. However, they did win and their record is now 5-0. Or 3-0. Or 6-0.