Girls Volleyball: Burlington Central freshman Rylie Hahn rising as a scoring threat

HAMPSHIRE – Rylie Hahn is mistakenly listed as 9-foot-9 on the Burlington Central roster.

Well, maybe there is some hidden truth behind it.

She appears to be playing at that towering level.

In reality, Hahn says she's 5-foot-8. She is quickly becoming a rising star – as a freshman – and is rocketing upward with each passing game.

"She kind of blew is away as an eighth-grader last year [in summer camp]," Burlington Central coach George Campos said after Central's rallied to stun Marengo 14-25, 25-22, 25-19 on Tuesday.

In the second set, Marengo (12-4) built a 20-17 lead on a handful of Central attacking errors, but could only muster two points the rest of the way, which included a 22-22 tie. After Sofia Jahangir laid down a kill, Hahn pounded two more to clinch the set.

In the third set, Marengo and Central tied 9-9 early, but the Rockets slowly pulled away. The Indians racked up attack and serve errors while Jackie Borman, Kathryn Schmidt and Charli Nielsen dialed up the offensive pressure for the Rockets. Central built a 20-15 lead, and while Hannah Ritter did everything she could to keep the Indians close with four kills, Central's momentum was too great to overcome.

"Right [off] the bat, she kind of was like 'I was the one that I need to kind of help motivate the team,'" Campos said of Hahn. "As a freshman, [she's] a great piece to have. Super aggressive."

Hahn certainly did her part, rifling 10 kills in the final two sets and finishing with 14 on the night.

"She's got the green light [to attack]," Campos continued. "I tell this to all the hitters, [and] everybody on the team: 'If you feel comfortable, go rip away.'"

The loss was Marengo's first in conference. In doing so the Indians committed a number of uncharacteristic errors.

"In set one, we made three errors," Marengo coach Meg Dobbertin said. "In set two and three, there's too many to count on my page. We didn't play at the level we should've played."

Only 10 matches into the season, Hahn remembers her first-ever varsity match well.

"My confidence was not there at all," Hahn recalled. "I'll never forget it: I was standing there, shaking so much...now I can go out there confident that I'm going to provide something for my team, and that I'm going to be able to do something that will be beneficial to us."

Hahn is being used all over the court. She began Tuesday's match in the back row; but lineup changes allow her to be versatile and dangerous offensively.

"No matter where she is on the court, she's always going to be an option to go up and get us a point," Campos said.