Thu, Nov 26 2009
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Published October 28, 2009 03:40 am - JEFFERSON — The Geneva volleyball team was so eager Tuesday night to get to the Division II district championship game Thursday that it nearly was guilty of getting ahead of itself and not getting there at all. Geneva KOs West G; Lake is next KARL PEARSON Star Beacon JEFFERSON — The Geneva volleyball team was so eager Tuesday night to get to the Division II district championship game Thursday that it nearly was guilty of getting ahead of itself and not getting there at all.
Thanks to the ability of its seven seniors to collect themselves and a group of underclassmen who were willing to make sure the team got there, the second-seeded Eagles earned a 25-17, 25-14, 20-25, 25-19 victory over fifth-seeded West Geauga in the night’s first district semifinal. Geneva (17-7) will play in its first district championship match since 2001, when coach Annah Haeseler was still an assistant coach to the now-retired Stan Bielech. Geneva’s opponent will be top-seeded Lake Catholic, which defeated fourth-seed Notre Dame-Cathedral Latin, 25-16, 25-12, 25-17, in the second semifinal. Lake Catholic (17-7) defeated Geneva in last year’s district semifinal. Late in the third game, it appeared Geneva might finish its night’s work early, leading 18-12. But West Geauga (11-11) rallied from there to force a fourth game. “They just flipped the switch and got the momentum going,” Haeseler said. “But I thought we came back when we got a few kills. That was a good sign.” It was a scary situation for at least some of the seniors. “Oh, gosh,” senior Taylor Webb, who had 13 points, 18 aces on 33-of-37 spiking, two ace blocks and an ace dink, said. “We got kind of quiet and (West Geauga) got kind of loud. “We just had to calm down and take a deep breath.” “We slipped up because we weren’t talking,” senior setter Stephanie Booth, who had eight points, but more importantly, mixed in three ace dinks and two ace blocks and had 28 ace sets on a 52-of-53 night, said. “We just needed to regroup and focus again. “I wasn’t nervous. I knew if we calmed down, we’d be all right.” Some big contributions from middle hitters Ashley Meaney, a junior, and Veronica Clutter, a sophomore, as well as sophomore outside hitter-setter Audra Puckrin, made the difference over the final stretch. “I always get a little nervous, but I knew we just had to calm down and pull through,” Meaney, who had two of her four ace spikes and one of her three ace blocks in the fourth game, said. “It really was a matter of the middle hitters connecting with our setters. We had to keep our attitude and our momentum up, too.” The fourth game still had its tense moments, too, with a tie still existing at 10. But a run of six straight points off the serve of senior Hillary Hambleton, who led the Eagles with 25 points, opened up a 16-10 lead for Geneva. The Wolverines never got closer than 18-15 again as Webb blasted seven of her ace spikes and Hambleton mixed in four more, including the match-clinching score. “All it took for us to win that third game was deciding not to be hesitant,” West Geauga coach Tom Booth said. “We’d been real hesitant in the first two games. We would have taken the fourth game, too, but we went into another period where we became hesitant again.” Booth credited Webb’s ability to bomb away in the fourth game with deciding the match. 
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