Corry volleyball sweeps Northwestern; claims third straight region four championship

Corry Volleyball poses for a picture with the Corry student section after winning the region four title outright by sweeping the Northwestern Wildcats 3-0 on Tuesday night.

Report by Kelly Goodsel

Corry Volleyball Head Coach

Corry, PA- Corry volleyball fans had a lot to celebrate on Tuesday night, it started with recognizing three wonderful seniors: Ava Hallberg, Brynley Watrous, and Sydney Mineo, and ended with the team celebrating the third straight Region 4 Championship! Corry swept the visiting Wildcats in three straight sets 25-10, 26-16, and 25-12.

Corry’s starting line up in set one included the three seniors filling the back row, Ava Hallberg setting, Sydney Mineo as defensive specialist, and Brynley Watrous as libero.  Corry jumped out to an early 5-2 lead on kills by juniors Regan Kemp, Rylee Nickerson, and Grace Allen and then freshmen Ava West finished the scoring with another kill from the right side of the court.  Junior defensive specialist Ellie Carey served a couple of points before collecting one of her two service aces and the lead was 9-3.  Ava Hallberg took things into her own hands with a perfectly placed setter dump for a kill to make the score 16-6 and the set was well in hand.  Naomi Brown set Grace Allen to score the final point and Corry won 25-10.

The second set Corry started off hot with five straight points, two kills by Allen, another Ava West kill, and junior Kendall Donoghue had two consecutive kills.   Senior Sydney Mineo, playing libero the second set, rattled off back-to-back service aces to stretch the lead to

10-2.  Corry again reached a ten-point lead at 15-5 when Northwestern took their first timeout.    Northwestern battled hard during the middle portion of set two and closed the gap to only five points (20-15 Corry), when Corry turned up the heat again led by another service ace by Mineo and kills by Allen and West.

Ali Yetzer was the third Corry player wearing the libero jersey in set 3 which was dominated by the lady beavers.  Corry jumped out to a 9-1 lead on two kills by Nickerson, West, Allen, and one by Donoghue.  Senior Brynley Watrous contributed to the scoring with an ace and stretched the lead to 16-4.  With all three seniors playing together in the back row, each was celebrated as Sydney Mineo came out for Grace Allen; Brynley Watrous was replaced with a hug by her freshmen sister Jordyn; and then Ava Hallberg came out for Naomi Brown.  Each senior was cheered by the fans and embraced by the coaching staff and fellow players as they came off the court. 

“It was a fun night celebrating our seniors, getting them the recognition they deserve, and getting lots of younger players some varsity experience.  Ava Hallberg ran the offense and really connected well with freshmen, right-side hitter Ava West and junior middle hitter Rylee Nickerson; combined the two had 19 kills on 38 attempts with zero hitting errors!  The seniors played great given the emotion of the night, Ava led the team with 36 assists, Brynley led the team with 10 digs, and Sydney led the team with 4 service aces.  It was great to see sophomores Naomi Brown and Katrena Downey contributing” stated Coach Goodsel.

with the win Corry claims the region four championship outright and improves their record to 13-0 overall, 9-0 in Region 4 action.  Corry will play the last regular season match of the year against Saegertown on Thursday night. The District 10 playoffs will also be announced on Thursday so the lady beavers will be able to plan the next few opponents as well as tune up for those playoff games at the Maplewood tournament on Saturday.

The Crotty Chevrolet Player of the game Ava West paid us a visit after the the match.

Statistical leaders for the match. 

JV Report By Mark Brenner

Corry Volleyball Junior Varsity Coach

The Junior Varsity team also got it done in a 2-0 sweep, quickly handing Northwestern a loss 25-5 and 25-15.   

The key to this win was Corry's superior serving and offense.  Corry stayed relatively engaged and focused throughout the match, even though the scores were a bit lop-sided. A good measure of a team's ability to focus is the number of unforced errors, especially serving and hitting errors. Corry served 49 times and did not miss a serve for the entire match. Even the competition was remarking on the effectiveness of Corry serving.  Corry hitters had twice as many kills and half the hitting errors of Northwestern. This is how we have won all season long, tough serving, scoring when we are in-system, and controlling the ball in the other phases of the game.

Outside hitter Jordyn Watrous and setter Maci Kemp had an excellent game at the service line, combining for 20 service points and 4 aces, while nailing their serving locations. Middle hitter Katie Downey led the offense in kills with 6 kills and only one error.

Corry serving leaders were Watrous (12 service points, 2 aces), and Kemp (8 service points, 2 aces).  Corry hitters were led by Downey (6 kills), MH Liv Swan (4 kills), OH Naomi Brown (3 kills), and OH Ava West (3 kills). Defensively, Watrous had 6 digs and Libero Mikayla Comitz had 5 digs.  Kemp had 10 assists and Brown had 7 assists. 

The last regular season match of the year will be against the Saegertown Panthers at home. JV opening serve is scheduled for 6:00 PM with varsity action to follow. It will be streamed live on the DeeJ Experience Sports Stream. www.deejexperience.com