Girls volleyball: Elyria Catholic powers past Lake Catholic

ELYRIA — After a bit of a blip a few weeks ago, Elyria Catholic is rolling again, winning its fourth straight match Tuesday night, this one a five-set thriller over three-time defending state champion Lake Catholic, 25-27, 25-16, 25-16, 26-28, 15-9. Earlier this month, Elyria Catholic lost a pair of matches to North Coast Conference opponents Padua and Holy Name, its first losses of the season, but it has responded with four straight wins, capped by its first five-set match of the year. "I said they did you a favor, putting you in a Set 5,'" Elyria Catholic coach Laurie Cogan said. "I said you need the confidence that you can go five sets with a team of this caliber and come out on top. So they did you a favor, now let's go out and win it.'" The Panthers followed Cogan's command perfectly, dominating the final set the same way they had dominated the second and third. The first and fourth sets, however, were a different story, with Elyria Catholic getting off to a slow start in both and being unable to come back despite forcing each set past 25 points. "This is kind of a trend for us," said sophomore Ari Dimacchia, who led the team with 19 kills. "We have a slow first set and then we reset, get in a better mindset and erase that set because there's still four more." Dimacchia, who missed the first match of the four-match winning streak, took some time to get going, but dominated the later stages of the match, recording nine of her 19 kills in the final two sets. She was far from the only standout for the Panthers, however, as they got significant contributions from some of their less-heralded players. "Claire Petrus was a brick wall," Cogan said. "She provided a ton of offense and a ton of defense ... it was her best match of the season. Sophia Niederst plays my middle back, and she was all over the court. Her defense was awesome tonight." Petrus recorded six block-kills for an Elyria Catholic team that dominated at the net all night, particularly on defense. "We've never worked together that well before," Petrus said. "Me and the people I was blocking with at the net, we were just doing a good job all together." If anything, the Panthers' back-line defense was even better, as the Cougars found their attacks dug off the ground time and time again, and while Niederst won't appear all over the box score, she was a key part of that defense. "We're always working (on defense) in practice," Niederst said. "We focus a lot on defense, it's one of our big things to get to every ball we can, run every ball down we can, and try to keep the ball above the ground. When we do that, we win." With the playoffs fast approaching, the Panthers are getting healthy and getting back into a groove at the right time, and they know how important wins like Tuesday's are going to be in the postseason. "Cogan told us we needed a match where we had to go five sets, to prove we could do it," Dimacchia said. "It took a new level of mental toughness, because we were all tired." The fifth set wasn't the only part of the match that showed the Panthers' mental toughness, however, as they closed out the third set on a 13-3 run to take a 2-1 lead in the match. Runs like that, and the poise they showed in the fifth set, will be major assets for the Panthers as the regular season winds down and they prepare for the playoffs with a couple of tournaments on either side of next Tuesday's massive showdown with NCC leaders Padua. Contact William Cunningham at (440) 329-7135 or ctsports@chroniclet.com. Elyria Catholic 25-25-25-26-15, Lake Catholic 27-16-16-28-9 KILLS: (LC) Sophia Raguz 9, Bella Patterson 4, Ahnna Bergant 18, Layla Kastner 11, Ryann Schneider 10, Kenzie Smith 5; (EC) Ella Feskanich 9, Ari Dimacchia 19, Jessica Conner 4, Mollie Mulgrew 9, Claire Petrus 3. DIGS: (LC) Anna Peterlin 1, Grace Stenger 4, Ava Starr 3, Lola Loncar 6, Bergant 1, Maddie Summers 2, Kastner 1; (EC) Bree Bodde 6, Ava Notarberardino 4, Marissa Kilgore 2, Dimacchia 8, Emelia Hirsch 2. ASSISTS: (LC) Stenger 1, Starr 52, Loncar 1, Bergant 1; (EC) Bodde 3, Dimacchia 1, Hirsch 39. ACES: (LC) Stenger 2, Loncar 1, Bergant 1, Kastner 1; (EC) Bodde 2, Conner 4, Sophia Niederst 1. BLOCK-KILLS: (LC) Bergant 2; (EC) Dimacchia 3, Conner 2, Mulgrew 3, Hirsch 4, Petrus 6.