Girls volleyball: Grace Zimmerman helps serve Flanagan-Cornell to victory over Henry-Senachwine

FLANAGAN – Stepping to the service line with her team trailing by six late in the second set to Henry-Senachwine, Flanagan-Cornell senior Grace Zimmerman became as hot as the temperature inside The Nest on Monday evening.

Zimmerman reeled off 10 consecutive points, including three aces, to push the Falcons in front 21-16.

Flanagan-Cornell, which captured the opening set, 25-17, won the second set, 25-20, to win the match and improve to 2-2 on the season.

“It wasn’t pretty, for sure, except for maybe Grace’s serving,” F-C coach Joe Estes said. “We don’t really work on pure serving in practice, we have it implemented into a few drills, but for the most part the girls are counted on to work on that part of their game on their own. Grace just got on a couple of nice runs tonight in key spots, and we needed both of them.

“This wasn’t a match where either team played as well as they can, but we just did enough to win it and move on.”

Zimmerman got the hosts off to a solid start in the first set, as she fired five aces in between kills from Raegan Montello, Kortney Harms and Chassie Bednaza to turn a two-point deficit into a 9-2 lead. The Mallards chipped into the disadvantage on an ace and a pair of kills by Catherine Miller and a winning swing from Kaitlyn Anderson, closing to 17-13.

But from there, a block by Bednaza, another ace by Zimmerman and a kill by Harms helped close things out.

“There are days when I’m on and days that I’m not, but I’m an aggressive server,” said Zimmerman, who finished with nine aces, four kills and six digs. “So sometimes you have to take the good with the bad, and I guess tonight was good.

“I’m always looking at my opponents, especially in the back row. I’m trying to see if they are quick, if they just subbed in or maybe struggled with the first return, and I try and go after them. Tonight, I found some of those things I look for, and fortunately they were having trouble with my serving.

“We didn’t play super well tonight, but I was glad I was able to help us come back in the second set and get the win.”

Henry-Senachwine (2-2) used three kills from Miller, as well as two each from Anderson and Talur Homann and an ace from Brooklyn Thompson to hold leads of 12-5, 14-6 and 16-10 in the second set before Zimmerman caught fire for the second time in the match.

“We really struggled with our passing and were very out of sync for much of the match tonight,” Henry-Senachwine coach Rita Self said. “That is very unusual for us. We didn’t have a back row that played very well tonight.

“That nice run we had in the second set to get the lead to 16-10, we were talking, playing together and attacking the ball. I felt like we had [the Falcons] on their heels at that point, and then we just stopped doing all of those things. We started playing timid and nervous at that point, and it’s hard to win when you are playing with that mentality.”

Behind Zimmerman on the scoresheet for F-C were Harms with six kills and four assists, Montello with five assists and Kalynne Kinderman with six digs.

Miller finished with five kills for H-S, Anderson five assists and a block, while Gabriella Garcia and Mikayla Frawley each collected seven digs.

Flanagan-Cornell next hosts Roanoke-Benson on Tuesday; while Henry-Senachwine entertains El Paso-Gridley on Thursday.