Columbus East’s Chloe Gilley, left, looks at teammate Erin Williams, right, as she sets the ball to Gabby Dean during a sectional volleyball match between Columbus East and Whiteland at Columbus East High School in Columbus, Ind., Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022.
Mike Wolanin | The Republic
Columbus East needed a quick wakeup call.
Even though the Olympians led early in their sectional volleyball match, coach Ellyn McIntosh needed to get her team regrouped. They got the message loud and, and they would dominate the remainder of the game to roll to a 25-19, 25-9, 25-15 victory over Whiteland.
“I told them that we weren’t focused,” McIntosh said. “We needed to focus in. Our defense wasn’t scrappy enough. We weren’t getting touches on balls that we normally would and we needed to clean up our side of the ball.”
East (18-12) got off to a slow start, but even with the slow start, it led 12-10, which prompted the quick timeout. Following the timeout, the Olympians were in control by scoring nine of the next 10 points to go ahead 21-11 and eventually closed out the set.
“We had to flip the switch,” East junior Chloe Gilley said. “That was the one thing we had to focus on today was pass the ball better and get that first ball contact, and the rest will fall into play.”
East kept the momentum and intensity going in the second set that Whiteland (8-17) couldn’t match, as the Olympians jumped out to a 15-3 lead. The Warriors got it to 17-9, but East closed the set out with eight straight points.
The Olympians closed out the third set early, leading 13-4, and eventually moved on to the semifinal.
“They brought the energy a lot more. We were getting better kills. Our serve-receive was not great tonight, but despite that, our hitters were making it work,” McIntosh said. “In the second set, I started to get some kids in, and that gave the team a little bit of energy and a little bit of a push.”
Gilley finished with 13 digs and five aces for East. Gabby Dean had nine kills and six blocks, Maddie Cline added 13 kills and nine digs and Erin Williams totaled 37 assists, 10 digs and two blocks.
Also for the Olympians, Caroline Frost tallied nine kills and one block, Jenna Guse had four kills and one block, Addison Emery notched five digs and three aces and Kenzie Foster added 12 digs.
The semifinal matches are set with Columbus North taking on Franklin in the first match at 11 a.m. on Saturday. East will play Shelbyville at approximately 1 p.m. following the first match. The championship is slated for 6 p.m. Saturday.
“We’re going to clean up what we did (today in practice),” McIntosh said. “I thought tonight it was pretty ugly on our side of the court quite a bit. Any points that they had wasn’t necessarily what they did, but it was our errors and ugly stuff by us. We’re going to come in (today) and get some touches and serve-receive and make sure we clean up our side of the ball.”
