Wood Volleyball Rolls To Win Over Pride, 3-0

Posted: October 22, 2014
By JOSH DORSEY
Special to The Winchester Star

WINCHESTER — The way the James Wood volleyball team is playing these days, there aren’t many things that can slow it down.

But an illegal substitution caused a 10-minute delay during the first set of the Colonels’ match against Heritage Tuesday, and the Pride rattled off five straight points once play resumed.

“We made an illegal substitution because we had a server go in for the wrong middle,” said James Wood sophomore outside hitter Leilani Burch. “Then instead of fixing it, they did not record the point before so they wanted us to replay the rotation and we had to explain to them that we had already played that rotation. It was kind of a wakeup call, we were kind of asleep when we came back.”

The five-point run drew Heritage to within three, but James Wood shook off the momentary lapse, regained control and cruised to a 3-0 (25-16, 25-16, 25-13) sweep of Heritage that took just over an hour at Donald H. Shirley Gymnasium.

“It’s hard to stay focused with something like that going on,” said James Wood coach Jill Couturiaux.

But the Colonels managed to do just that thanks to Burch, who put together one of her best performances of the season with 11 kills, second only to senior outside hitter Katie Houser, who led the team with 16 kills.

“Leilani came up big for us tonight,” Couturiaux said. “As a team I thought we attacked the ball very well on the right side and that’s something we have been working on. We don’t want to be a one-dimensional team.”

While it was a great performance by Burch, it was just another typical game for Houser, who also added a team-best 13 aces and two blocks. Houser will be attending the University of Notre Dame on a volleyball scholarship next year.

“Katie’s game speaks for itself. You hear a kid from James Wood is going to Notre Dame and it’s pretty easy to pick out which one she is,” Couturiaux said.

The closest Heritage came all night was following the delay when they pulled within three points, but it would be short-lived. James Wood stormed out to a 20-8 lead in the second set behind the serving of Houser, and following the dominant second set the Colonels took no time in polishing off Heritage in the final set with a 25-13 victory.

“What helped us a lot was Katie’s serves, they definitely didn’t give up. They put up a good fight. After the first two sets teams tend to back down,” Burch said. “There are games where she gets a huge number of serves, tonight was one of them. Overall she gets us a lot of points with her serving.”

Heritage (7-8) was clearly outmatched by the Colonels (19-1), whose only loss came on Sept. 6 against Musselman (W.Va.) in a tournament that was held in Virginia Beach.

“I think we did really good overall because I think we did really well on passing and attacking both and we didn’t make many mistakes,” Burch said.

Senior Ashley Hillyard led the Colonels with 14 assists while Savannah Yost and Ally Iden both contributed seven digs in the victory.

“I thought we played well, I thought we attacked the ball really well. I thought we played excellent defense and we were aggressive with our serving,” Couturiaux said. “I thought we maintained our focus and composure. We always want to leave a better team than what we came in as. No matter what the scoreboard says we want to keep pushing to get better. We want to be peaking right about now.”

With the 19-1 record it’s hard to say that the Colonels are peaking at the right time, as it seems they have been peaking the entire season.

Perhaps the biggest test for the Colonels is still ahead. James Wood will travel to Loudoun County, the reigning state champions who boast an 18-2 record this season, on Oct. 28.

The importance of next week’s matchup was noted by Couturiaux.

“Next Tuesday will decide the seeding for the playoffs when we play Loudoun County,” Couturiaux said.