Chloe Gilley
Columbus East came close in the third set Thursday night, but coach Ellyn McIntosh thought the Olympians should have been more competitive in the first two sets of their Hoosier Hills Conference volleyball matchup with New Albany.
The Bulldogs never let the East get too much momentum and left with a 25-17, 25-20, 25-23 victory in a battle for second place in the HHC.
“I’m proud of the fight (in the third set), but it shouldn’t have been 17 and then 20 in the first two sets,” McIntosh said. “We have to be better at this point. I think we should have been more competitive than we were. I thought we were going to compete better than that. I did not think we would lose in three.”
New Albany (10-4, 4-1) never trailed in the first set. The Bulldogs jumped out to 7-4 leads in both the second and third sets, but both times, the Olympians (5-12, 3-2) rallied to take 9-7 leads with Jenna Guse at the service line.
New Albany came back to take the second set and went back ahead in the third set before East regained the lead at 20-19. After the Bulldogs took a 23-20 lead, the Olympians tied it with Chloe Gilley serving, but New Albany scored the final two points to close out the match.
“We missed a lot of serves,” McIntosh said. “I had kids sailing balls out of bounds. We weren’t consistent hitting. We weren’t consistent blocking. My defense is all over the place right now. We didn’t have any type of consistency, and we let runs get to us. We let them get too many in a row.”
Gilley led East with 31 digs and four aces. Guse pounded 10 kills, Krea Martin recorded 24 assists and Caroline Frost had one solo and one assist block.
Also for the Olympians, Frost tallied seven kills, Anika Jenkins added four kills and Kimberly Carothers had four kills and one assist block. Addison Emery notched 11 digs, Martin collected 10 digs and Guse added seven digs and two aces.
