Volleyball: Lady Hubs leave no doubt in win over Stillman Valley

Rochelle improves to 4-4-1 with 25-17, 25-11 victory

Russell Hodges
Posted 8/30/18

Members of the Rochelle varsity volleyball team weren’t happy with how Tuesday’s heartbreaking loss against Plano wound up. The girls channeled their frustration into energy Thursday evening, however, and the Lady Hubs successfully bounced back with a decisive victory over Stillman Valley.

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Volleyball: Lady Hubs leave no doubt in win over Stillman Valley

Rochelle improves to 4-4-1 with 25-17, 25-11 victory

Posted

ROCHELLE — Members of the Rochelle varsity volleyball team weren’t happy with how Tuesday’s heartbreaking loss against Plano wound up. The girls channeled their frustration into energy Thursday evening, however, and the Lady Hubs successfully bounced back with a decisive victory over Stillman Valley.

Junior Emma Smith recorded three kills late in the first set to give Rochelle a lead in the match, and an error by the Lady Cardinals resulted in a quick two-set win for the Lady Hubs by a final score of 25-17, 25-11. Rochelle (4-4-1) will return to its home court this weekend to host the Lady Hub Varsity Invitational.

“We definitely motivated ourselves harder to get the win tonight,” senior Emily Engelkes said. “We’re really close and we all get along really well, but we know when we need to be serious on the court. We’re 100 percent encouraging to each other all the time, and we’re running hard practices… We’re all motivated to work harder this year.”

A pair of kills from senior Emma Mehrings helped set the Lady Hubs up 7-4 early in the first set. Rochelle led the Lady Cardinals 12-6 before a brief 5-1 rally by Stillman Valley tightened things up halfway through. But the Lady Hubs never folded, and the girls responded with a 9-5 run of their own before Rochelle took 3-of-4 points down the stretch.

Stillman Valley fell behind 9-4 in the second set, as the Lady Cardinals had trouble receiving strong serves from Mehrings and senior Grace Orlikowski, who each finished with four aces in the victory. Rochelle struggled with service errors in 2017, but Orlikowski said the Lady Hubs have emphasized serving in practice this season.

“We work on serves constantly,” Orlikowski said. “We need to get 30 serves down before we can do anything else… We worked really hard in practice Wednesday night with a lot of conditioning, and we spent a lot of time working on our offense and being able to hit our spots.”

Rochelle ran away with the second set, going on a 10-3 run to take a 19-7 lead before Stillman Valley called its second timeout of the set. Mehrings and Smith, who combined for 17 kills in the match, continued finding holes in the Lady Cardinal defense at the outside hitter position. Sophomore Clare Green remained steady at the setter spot with 20 assists in the match, while senior Sarah Craven paced the Lady Hub defense with 12 digs.

Engelkes and Orlikowski teamed up for 17 digs in the win. Rochelle will play two nonconference matches against Genoa-Kingston (Sept. 4) and Earlville (Sept. 5) before beginning Northern Illinois Big 12 West play against Ottawa on the road Sept. 11.

“We have to push harder than we did before,” Engelkes said. “We got down on ourselves a lot last year, and if we lost a couple points in a row we would give up. I feel like we can keep ourselves together and give it 100 percent this year.”