April 19, 2024

Cardinal volleyball team gets off the snide

By Jocelyn Sheets

Newton sophomore Kaytlin Ahn (8) hits the ball for a kill in a recent home match. The Cardinals went 2-3 at the ADM Invirtational Thursday in Adel. (Jocelyn Sheets)

ADEL — Newton High’s Cardinal volleyball team got into the win column Thursday night at the Adel-DeSoto-Minburn Invitational. What a difference a week makes for the young Cardinal varsity team.

Newton rallied from a first-set loss to rack up its first win of the 2014 season. The Cardinals avenged a two-set loss to Knoxville a week ago, beating the Panthers 18-21, 21-18, 16-14.

The Cardinals went 2-3 at the ADM tournament. They defeated Interstate-35 21-7, 21-15.

Newton took Perry to three sets before losing. Perry won 15-21, 21-17, 15-9. ADM, ranked 15th in Class 4A, beat Newton 21-10, 21-11 and Class 2A 15th-ranked Woodward-Granger defeated Newton 21-14, 21-13.

“We had some hard fought matches. Against Perry, we played right with them and went to three just came up short,” said Laura Rowen, NHS head coach. “Our other two loses might have swayed in the other direction, if we really focused and improved our serving and serve reception.”

Sophomore Kaytlin Ahn was a force at the net and from the service line for the Cardinals Thursday. Ahn finished with 16 kills. She had five kills against Knoxville and five against Woodward-Granger.

Ahn and sophomore Ryanne Rausch had the hot hand from the service line in the Cardinals’ win over Interstate-35. Rausch had nine service aces in 15 serve attempts while Ahn served up seven aces.

For the tournament, Ahn and Rausch each had 13 service aces while Megan Pressgrove and Courtney Jacobsen had three ace serves apiece and Taylor Shipley had two aces. Pressgrove put down 11 kills and had nine set assists. Jacobsen had five kills and Sydney Hemann had four kills.

Shipley was credited with 12 set assists and had one kill. Morgan Allen and Emily Fitzgerald each had three kills and Allison Ergenbright had two kills.

Ahn came up with 22 digs, 10 coming against Woodward-Granger, plus she had two solo blocks and one assisted block at the net. Pressgrove had one solo block and five assisted blocks and had 13 digs. Hemann made one solo block and had three assisted blocks while Ergenbright had two assisted blocks.

Newton (2-8) opens Little Hawkeye Conference play Tuesday at Pella Christian.

Contact Sports Editor Jocelyn Sheets at (641) 792-3121 Ext. 6535 or jsheets@newtondailynews.com.