Posted on 19 September 2013 by La Habra Journal
Whittier Christian’s Kylee Wolfe squares up for an attack while La Habra’s Marina Pilkington and Ryana Murch attempt to block in the first set of the Lady Heralds’ 3-0 win, Thursday night at WCHS.
by Nathan Percy
La Habra Journal
The Whittier Christian girls volleyball team seemed to click on all cylinders in a 3-0 sweep of La Habra, Friday night at Whittier Christian.
Passing was the strength of the Lady Heralds, while for the Lady Highlanders, it proved to be a problem leading to the 25-15, 25-11, 25-14 final.
“It was nice to get everyone in and get a little playing time,” said Shawn Hunter, Whittier Christian head coach. “We’re a consistent team and it’s nice to have that to go out and play hard.”
Jennifer Washle varied the offensive attack, spreading the ball to six different teammates and totaling 28 assists.
Deanna Blaine led the Lady Heralds with nine kills, Jeanne Reinis added seven kills in the third set alone. Kylee Wolfe added six kills, but sat out the third set to rest her shoulder.
For the Lady Highlanders, more adjustments were made as setter Ashly Hernandez returned from injury to compete in her second game of the season.
For the second and third sets, La Habra ran with two setters. Sophomore Casey Lunceford led the Lady Highlanders with 12 assists, while Hernandez added three.
Corinne Bell led the attack with seven kills.
“[Whittier Christian] played more consistently, they played to win,” Spear said. “We kind of cowered down a little bit at first and then tried to fight back but it was too late, so it’s just inconsistency and maturity level that we’re battling with right now.”
The two teams began the match trading points for a brief time before Whittier Christian went on 7-0 run in part to unforced errors by La Habra.
From then on, Whittier Christian controlled the set, only yielding service when an attack went out of bounds or hit the net.
The Lady Heralds started looking more like themselves in the second set. Washle dished out nine assists and Kiana Louie picked up three kills from the middle.
La Habra found ways to fend off some hard shots by Blaine and Wolfe, but passing led to some inconsistencies offensively.
“If we play as well as we played in the second game, we should be fine,” Spear said. “The passing is what hurt us tonight. Once we get more consistent with that we’ll be fine come league, but it’s just getting there, the bobbing and weaving through games to get us there.”
With Kylie Cooke serving, the Lady Heralds rang off a late 8-0 run to take the second set 25-11. Cooke had three service aces in the run.
Hunter subbed in some of his younger players for the third set and Whittier Christian remained competitive thanks in large part to Washle, who looked no different with the reserves than she did with the starters.
Reinis was the biggest benefactor, collecting seven kills. Blaine added five more on limited playing time.
“[Jeanne Reinis] has been playing great for us of late,” Hunter said. “Tonight she played well and she came up with some good things for us in the tournament last weekend. We’re getting pretty seamless with them, we can throw them in and know we can still compete.”
For La Habra, Lunceford began to gain a rhythm, posting six assists. Kolschefski had three of her four kills in the third set.
“We picked up our serve-receive a little bit,” Hunter said. “We passed pretty well in the [Dave Mohs] tournament and it’s just coinciding with us trying to go a little faster. I told Washle that we were trying to get faster today, so we were purposefully trying to speed things up.”
The Lady Heralds (6-4) will head down to San Diego over the weekend for the Otay Ranch Tournament.
La Habra will face off against Downey at home next Tuesday at 5:30 p.m.
“That match is going to be tough, but they don’t have the players they used to, so we could have some success,” Spear said. “I think it will be a good challenge for us.”