Girls volleyball: Newark tops Prairie Central in straight sets on senior night

NEWARK – The Newark volleyball team, which was coming off “a very solid tournament” after finishing runner-up in the talent-filled Bradley-Bourbonnais Tournament on Saturday, said coach P.J. McKinney, was looking to continue that stellar play in Monday’s senior night match against Prairie Central.

The Norsemen – after honoring seniors Aubrey Benesh, Taylor Kruser, Grace Thrall, Mia Geistler, Bre Dixon and Kelly Christian before the first serve – did just that in a 25-20, 25-17 victory over the Hawks.

The hosts received solid games from Lauren Ulrich (six kills, six assists, four points), Kiara Wesseh (five kills, two aces, four points), Danica Peshia (six points, an ace), Addison Ness (four kills) and Kruser (12 points, an ace, 11 digs). Prairie Central was paced by five kills each by Bella Mekarski and Sawyer Ashman, as well as two aces each from Kerigan Fehr (four points) and Gracie Edelman (eight points).

The win pushes Newark’s record to a sparkling 28-5, while the Hawks dropped to 12-16.

“We’ve done a lot better than I thought we would,” Kruser said. “We really hadn’t all played with each other, so I guess at the beginning of the season I was hopeful we’d play well, but there was a lot of unknowns, in my mind at least. But we’ve all bonded together great, and now we all hang together. It’s been a fun season so far, and we are going to see how much longer we can make it last.

“We want quick games, not in a bad way, but the pace we play at. When we go back to serve, we all want to keep our serve as long as we can, and I think, when we aren’t serving, we want to keep whoever is serving there. If we can serve aggressively, play solid defense and make plays offensively when we have the chances, I always feel we are going to be in a good place to win.”

After the teams traded points early in the opening set, a quick four-point spurt by Wesseh, including a pair of aces, had Newark up 10-4. The Norsemen then used a pair of winning swings by Ness plus one each from Kodi Rizzo, Ulrich, Christian and Wesseh to grow the lead to 18-11. The Hawks used a four-point run by Fehr to close to within 18-16, but a pair of short three-point runs, including two more kills from Ness, closed out the set.

“Just watching Prairie Central on film, I knew they were going to a very scrappy team on defense and that we were going to have to play solid defense right with them,” McKinney said. “I thought for the most part we did that. I feel like we are pretty sound taking care of the hard shots, but what we still need to get better at defending is the soft ones. That just comes down to being a little quicker on our feet and just a little more anticipation.”

A four-point burst by Ulrich and a six-point run by Kruser jumped Newark out to a 13-2 advantage in the second set. The visitors again bounced back, scoring the next eight points on Edelman’s serve to close the gap to 13-10. Out of a Newark timeout, a Hawks serving error was followed by a tip-kill from Ulrich and an ace from Peshia to get the Norsemen rolling again. The squads traded points before Newark scored five of the final seven, the last on a kill from Dixon.

“We are trying to fine-tune everything with the postseason coming up next week,” McKinney said. “With senior night and the last home match tonight, it was nice to be able to start all six of them – they all deserve it – but it also had things just a little bit out of sync at times, and at times we had some bad breaks. That said, everyone that played tonight did an outstanding job and that made the night a very enjoyable one for me.”

Newark will travel to take on Somonauk on Tuesday, hoping to clinch a share of the Little Ten Conference title, and then wrap up the regular season Thursday at Geneseo,