Girls volleyball: Streator has straight-set win over Woodland in crosstown opener

STREATOR – There is one key that Streator volleyball coach Julie Gabehart feels will be important for her team all season, and in Monday’s season opener against crosstown Woodland, that key – strong serving – was at the top of the list.

The Bulldogs – who in a day-of switch hosted at Pops Dale Gymnasium due to the lack of air conditioning at the Warrior Dome – used fast starts and a solid serving attack throughout, finishing with 12 aces and looking in midseason form in a 25-13, 27-25 triumph over the Warriors.

“Our serving was very strong tonight, and that has been a big focus for us,” Gabehart said. “We’ve talked a lot about really using our serves as a weapon, to look for locations to hopefully take our opponent out of system right away.

“Woodland is historically a very good serve-receive and passing program, and an overall great defensive program. You have to really challenge them. If you don’t, they are going to easily pop it up to their setter over and over. One of the big keys we talked about before the match is that we were going to have to be aggressive serving the ball. I feel like we did a great job of doing that.”

[ Photos: Woodland vs Streator volleyball ]

Streator was led by senior setter Emma Rambo’s five-ace, three-kill, 15-assist, 14-point outing. Junior Aubrey Jacobs posted a match-high nine kills, nine assists and six points, while senior Sonia Proksa added six kills. Junior Maiya Lansford and senior Shaelyn Groesbeck each registered three aces and five points.

“Emma’s game in serving and setting is strong all the way around, but she works very hard at it,” Gabehart said. “She also has been working hard on her hitting as well to give her just another weapon to have for us. Emma and Aubrey both did a great job setting, but they also had the benefit of some great passes tonight. We didn’t have very many passes that weren’t right on the money.

“I told the girls after the match that I really didn’t have any complaints. For a first match, we played really well.”

Woodland was paced by six kills and a pair of blocks from sophomore Grace Longmire. Senior Malayna Pitte added five kills and five points, while senior Gabby Jacobs had six points, including an ace, and junior Layna Wilcoxen five points and an ace. Ella Derossett passed for 11 assists.

In the opening set, Streator jumped to a 13-4 advantage and pushed it to 20-11 after a pair of aces by Groesbeck and a kill each from Proksa and Aubrey Jacobs. Then after a sideout, Lansford closed out the set serving four straight points, two on aces and set point on a thunderous kill by Aubrey Jacobs.

Streator started the second set strong, jolting to leads of 10-2 and 14-7. From there Woodland chipped away, scoring three points off the hand of Gabby Jacobs, four more on the serve of Malayna Pitte and eventually tied the set on three more service wins by Gabby Jacobs to tie things at 20-all.

The leads see-sawed until the Bulldogs used consecutive winners by Aubrey Jacobs, Groesbeck and Mya Zavada to close out the set and match.

“We’ve been talking coverage of open areas since the first practice. I always tell my teams, ‘How you practice is how you’re going to play.’ I feel like tonight, for the most part, we played like we’ve practiced,” Woodland coach Michelle Pitte said. “We came in not as hyped as we needed to be. Maybe that was just first-match jitters or playing in a different building or playing with new teammates from last season.

“We’ll take tonight and learn from it just like we took the first set tonight and used it in the second set. We made fewer mistakes in the second set, which means the girls learned from experience and used it to improve. We have some things to fix, but they are all fixable, and we’ll start doing that (Tuesday) at practice.”

Streator is scheduled back in action at Dwight on Tuesday. Woodland returns to the court at Roanoke-Benson on Thursday.