Wood Volleyball Stays Focused In 3-0 Rout Over Millbrook

Posted: October 17, 2014
By JERRY HOLSWORTH
Special to The Winchester Star

WINCHESTER — Special Love Night at Millbrook High School, which raises money for kids with cancer, packed the Pioneers’ gym for their volleyball match with James Wood Thursday. But despite the highly partisan crown, the Colonels were able to stay focused and demolish Millbrook 25-10, 25-18, 25-6.

“All of our players are big supporters of Special Love, and we were really impressed by the job Millbrook did tonight with it,” said Colonels libero Ally Iden. “But we knew that we also had an important volleyball game to play, and we talked about putting on our blinders and going out there and focusing on volleyball.”

It took James Wood (18-1, 7-0 Northwestern District) very little time to establish its dominance. The Colonels began the opening set with an 8-0 run and didn’t look back.

Millbrook (8-8, 2-4 Northwestern) never really challenged Wood, scoring on only a kill by Imani Major and a block by Alexa Keeler. The other eight Pioneer points came off Colonel errors.

“You don’t get to play in front of a big crowd like that much,” said James Wood sophomore middle blocker Taylor Heishman. “But you have to really focus on volleyball when you’re on the road against a big crowd like Millbrook brought tonight. I thought we were very focused and blocked them out.”

Wood was led by outside hitter Katie Houser, who finished the first set with seven kills, but the senior wasn’t the only Colonel to score points. The lopsided victory was the result of a team effort as seven Wood players scored in the set. Heishman contributed three kills, and sophomore opposite Leilani Burch had two kills in the first set.

“I thought that several of our players had a very good night,” said James Wood coach Jill Couturiaux. “Heishman had several blocks at the net and got her hands on a lot of balls too. That slows them down offensively and allows our defenders a chance to make a solid play on defense. Overall, I thought we played a very good game both offensively and defensively.”

Millbrook recovered in the second set and challenged the Colonels throughout. Although the Colonels were able to jump ahead early with a 7-1 run, the Pioneers took advantage of several Wood miscues to narrow the Colonel lead to 9-5.

Wood pushed ahead again 18-10 thanks to another eight kills by Houser, but Millbrook again fought back with a 5-0 run to pull to within three, 18-15.

“James Wood is very good,” said Pioneers coach Ashley Sutphin. “But I also thought that we lost our fire at times. We found it in the second set and came back twice on them. We have a really strong defense in our back line, and they certainly gave us a chance, but we were missing a couple of front-line players and I thought that had an effect too.”

From that point on, two kills, an ace, and a block by Heishman, as well as a kill by Burch, finished off the Pioneers.

One thing that kept the second set relatively close was the defensive play of Millbrook’s back line. It was something that the Colonels were equally adept at. Heishman’s ace late in the second set was the first ace of the match.

Millbrook’s noisy, supportive crowd and the Pioneers’ solid defense only took them so far as Wood seemed oblivious to both and was completely focused on beating Millbrook.

“Our focus on the back line is to give a good pass,” Iden said. “I thought we did a really good job of that tonight. A good pass is critical to setting up our offense.”

That focus, as well as an obvious loss of confidence as the match progressed gave Wood its most lopsided win of the night in the third set.

The Colonels for the third time jumped ahead early 6-1, but this time there was no comeback in Millbrook. One critical difference came on the service line where Wood scored on nine aces, including the match winner by sophomore opposite Ashanti Day.

Houser contributed another three aces in the win, and finished the night with 18 kills. Heishman added a kill and block to the Colonels’ point total in the set, and senior Lindsey Painter matched that with a kill and a block of her own.

Senior Ashley Hillyard also made her presence felt scoring on four kills and four aces in the final two sets, and finished the night with 18 assists as setter. Sophomore sister Megan Hillyard had nine assists for the match.

Millbrook was led by Major, who had five kills for the night, all but one of them coming in the second set.

“Last time they played against us they took a set from us,” Couturiaux said. “I told our girls that tonight we needed to come in here and play with enthusiasm. We know that we have a target on our back. We needed to respond to all of that and finish strong.”

Special Love is an organization connected with Camp Fantastic, which provides camp opportunities to kids with cancer. The Pioneers raised close to $2,000 and 15-year-old Abby Snider spoke before the match about camp and her experiences with her diagnosis.