Girls volleyball: Wellington drops second set, recovers to beat Brookside

SHEFFIELD — It wasn't just a typical early season Lorain County League high school girls volleyball match between Wellington and Brookside. The stakes were a bit higher than normal for this one Tuesday night. The Dukes and Cardinals both needed a win to keep pace with Firelands for the chase of a league championship. Both entered the match a game behind the first-place Falcons. Despite a rocky second set, it was Wellington who came away with a 25-23, 7-25, 25-20, 25-14 victory. Wellington improved to 5-5 overall and 4-1 in the LCL, while Brookside slipped to 3-4 and 3-2. Junior Kalynne Pickering led Wellington with 11 kills. Sophomore Noli Deidrick had nine kills while senior Sophia Beck and sophomore Shelby Gallion each had eight kills. Junior Courtney Krosse directed the attack with 41 assists. Sophomore Alex Mills had 20 digs and had four ace serves. "The coaches do a good job of telling us what we need to hear, especially today," Beck said. "I feel like if energy goes down, we go down immediately. Just fixing tiny little errors and everyone puts in a little bit of energy, are a big difference. It just happens. We've just continued to work this season playing as a team. If we have that as a major focus we do fine. When we get in our own heads and play as individuals is when we kind of fall apart. We need to be a team." The win was Wellington's fifth straight over Brookside dating back to Sept. 14, 2023. Prior to that the Cardinals won 32 straight league matches over the Dukes dating back to 2007."We started getting out of system for awhile so our back row decided to get some better passes off of the serve receive and I think our serves got even a little bit stronger," Wellington second-year coach Jack Colvin said. "The girls had good energy coming on back." Wellington had its third straight winning season last year (15-8, 11-3 LCL) after 11 straight losing seasons from 2010-20. "If the girls can pass that ball and we can stay in system it keeps us going," Colvin said. "The object is to get everybody else out of system. I think they did a great job after losing that one set. They came back and put it on and kept the energy and they kept a good head on their shoulders. It was great." Brookside finished 10-13 overall in 2024, 6-8 in the LCL. The Cards were coming off a 3-0 win over Oberlin in their previous LCL match Sept. 4. "Wellington made errors and we didn't in that second set that we won," Brookside fourth-year coach Kristin Walsh said. "Then it went vice versa. They stepped up their game and we didn't. We fell apart. We let error after error come in and decided that we were going to hang our heads instead of dig deeper and find our grit." Wellington was coming off a tough three-set loss Monday to Open Door. "We've been having our ups and down this season," Colvin said. "I feel like they're finally coming into the groove. I think we're in the right motion going into the rest of the season for our conference. Hopefully we can stay that way. The girls have to do the playing. They stepped up themselves and that's great." The first set of the night was pivotal. Brookside trailed the entire first set and was behind by as much as six points at 18-12 before rallying for a 23-22 lead following an ace serve by sophomore Sydney Adkins. Wellington answered with a kill by Gallion and a pair of aces by Mills to rally and win the set. Brookside jumped out to a 7-2 lead in the second set. Wellington only got as close as three points once at 8-5. Senior Alyssa Popowski was the big contributor for Brookside in the second set as she served 10 straight points to give the Cardinals a 19-5 lead. Wellington led nearly the entire way in the final two sets. The third set was especially tight. The third set was tied five times, the final time at 17 after the Cardinals grabbed their only lead of the third set at 17-16 after a hitting error by the Dukes. Wellington outscored Brookside 8-3 down the stretch after a 17-17 deadlock. Wellington pulled away in the fourth set after Brookside cut the Dukes' lead to 8-6. Wellington went on a 13-3 run to take a 21-9 lead and never looked back. Senior Bella Weiss led Brookside with 11 kills while senior Sara Afaneh had five. Adkins had 26 assists. Junior Lily Schremp had 12 digs while her sister, freshman Violet Schremp, had seven digs. Junior Amira Fraam had three aces. "I don't think we're a young team," Walsh said. "I think we're trying to figure out how not to be satisfied with just playing. We need to work on keeping our energy up and to not fall apart when we make an error, that mental part of the game." Contact Paul Heyse at (440) 329-7135 or ctsports@chroniclet.com.