Tatiana Conley Is On The Attack While Gehlen Catholic’s Cadence Goebel Attempts To Block.

Alyssa Van Beek Offers A Challenge To The Attack Of Gehlen Catholic’s Aurora Goebel.

South O’Brien’s opponent for its home opener September 8 presented a considerable challenge. Gehlen Catholic made the trek to Paullina as the fifth-ranked team in Class 1A. Despite some periods of stellar play by the host team, the Jays were able to emerge with a 3-0 War Eagle Conference victory, dropping the Wolverines to 0-2 in the loop.
Gehlen jumped out in front early, on the way to a 25-7 first-set win. The second set was close throughout. South O’Brien trailed by only three at 22-19 before the Jays finished strong for a 25-19 victory. “Set two went better because we cleaned up the errors and started to receive better,” explained Wolverine head coach Cortney Roskamp. “We stuck our passes so we could actually run our offense. We also kept the service pressure on Gehlen which kept them out-of-system and allowed us to put a solid block in front of them.”
What proved to be the last set was closer than the final score of 25-13 would indicate. The set was tied at 8-8 before the Jays took the lead for good. “Set three was actually very competitive and the first half of play was consistent to how we played in set two,” noted Roskamp. “However, toward the end of the set we began making too many unforced errors again and that let Gehlen carry the game away.”
Marissa Ebel supplied half of South O’Brien’s eight kills. Setter Whitney Einck assisted on seven of the eight. She also produced seven digs while Karlee Warnke dug up five Gehlen attacks. Maddie Johnson recorded one solo block and assisted on three more. The Wolverines fired 11 ace serves with four coming from Johnson and three from Warnke.
South O’Brien Stats
Kills-Errors-Attempts (Kill Efficiency): Team 8-16-47 (-.170), Karlee Warnke 1-4-5 (-.600), Whitney Einck 0-0-1 (.000), Marissa Ebel 4-2-19 (.105), Alyssa Van Beek 0-1-4 (-.250), Tatiana Conley 2-6-12 (-.333), Brooklyn Edwards 0-1-1 (-1.000), Maddie Johnson 1-2-5 (-.200).
Assists: Einck 7, Warnke 1.
Digs: Team 33, Einck 7, Warnke 5, Jadyn Renken, Ebel, Conley 4, Jinger Nieuwenhuis, Payton Farquhar 3, Van Beek 2, Edwards 1.
Blocks: Johnson 1 solo, 3 assists; Warnke, Einck, Van Beek 2 assists; Ebel 1 assist.
Serving (Efficiency): Team 36-42 (.857) 11 aces, Warnke 7-9 (.778) 3 aces, Einck 3-3 (1.000), Ebel 7-7 (1.000) 1 ace, Van Beek 4-4 (1.000) 1 ace, Conley 6-7 (.857) 2 aces; Edwards 3-3 (1.000), Johnson 6-9 (.667) 4 aces.