Newark races to leads, holds off Aurora Christian for Class 1A regional championship

SERENA – It’s one thing to bend a little when you have a lead, but it’s quite another to bend so much that you give up control.

The No. 1-seeded Newark Norsemen raced out to leads of 12-4, 14-6 and 17-7 on Aurora Christian in the championship match of the Class 1A Serena Regional championship, then withstood two massive runs to come away with the opening-set win.

It then saw leads of 10-5 and 12-6 turn into a pair of one-point deficits in the latter game, but NHS still managed to come away with a hard-fought 25-20, 25-23 victory, earning a spot in the Polo Sectional next Tuesday against Stockton.

The Lady Blackhawks topped Durand 25-23, 25-16 in the Forreston Regional finale also on Thursday.

The regional crown for the 25-10 Norsemen is the seventh straight for the program and third straight under third-year coach PJ McKinney, who could not be lulled into a false sense of security by the leads, no matter how large – until the final point hit the court.

“I knew it wasn’t gonna be easy,” McKinney said. “When we got up on them, I knew they had a run in them because they’re a good team and have good servers. We got stuck in a rotation and they ran off four or five in a row, so I called a timeout because a lot of these kids haven’t been in that situation before … We just had to fight through some runs.

“This game is all about runs and all about momentum and one point can turn into four or five quickly, and we saw that. We stopped that, regained our composure a bit and that’s a credit to our senior leadership. They bring things together and let everyone know it’s gonna be all right.”

One of those seniors, Adriana Larson, stepped up in a big way, blasting 11 kills to go with an ace and two blocks.

“Because we lost all our seniors last year, no one was expecting us to be here, to get this far,” Larson said. “So it was a huge thing for us to get here tonight and an even bigger this to actually win … It was because of our team bonding. We have a lot of good chemistry on this team – and not just on the court but off of it, too – and that helped us get there.

“I’m a little nervous about the sectional, I can’t lie, because I want to win at least one there … then take the others one at a time.”

Covering the tips and blocking well paced an NHS defense that helped turn the tide. A sideout point and four straight points from her classmate, Addison Ness – beginning and ending on Larson kills – opened up a 12-4 margin, and consecutive hitting errors by the Eagles made it 17-7 before AC (22-10) started to claw back.

Four points in a row by Breanna Hard sliced the deficit to 18-15 and four more by Erica Waltmire made it 23-20 before a Larson kill and a Ness tip closed it out.

Newark then took leads of 10-5 and 12-6 before AC’s Ashlyn Aseltine reeled off five straight points, the last an ace to give the No. 4 Eagles a 13-12 edge.

With the second set tied at 21 on an Eagle service error, a Rylie Carson kill and AC miscue put NHS on top for good, with kills by Carson (five kills, nine digs) and Larson netting the final two points.

“We’re playing a great team, right? It’s always so interesting every time we play them, back and forth, back and forth. They become kind of a thorn in my side,” AC coach Mayra Johnson said with a laugh. “They have great players like we do, so we’re pretty level …. Tonight, we just made more mistakes. I told the girls that this was our game to lose if we could force errors. Unfortunately, we had too many errors and needed to communicate a little more.

“After the first set, our serve receive was not what it should have been. The way we played today was not how we played yesterday ([n the semifinal win over Serena] when our passes were on point.”