Girls district volleyball: Amherst, Avon win; will meet in regional semifinal

BEREA — Avon and Amherst each won Division II volleyball district championships Wednesday night and are set to square off for a third time in the regional semifinal next Thursday at Streetsboro. No. 2 seed Avon won easily, sweeping No. 19 Eastlake North, 25-11, 25-16, 26-8, for its third district title in a row. The Eagles, ranked third in the state rankings in D-II behind Anthony Wayne and Magnificat, improved to 23-1 with the win. Eastlake North finished 9-14. No. 10 Amherst (15-9), after winning the first two sets, 25-20, 25-18, against tall, talented No. 13 Walsh Jesuit (11-11), dropped games three and four, 19-25, 18-25, but battled back from a 9-6 deficit in the fifth set to win, 15-12, to claim its first district title in three years. Amherst had just beaten Walsh last week in non-conference play in four sets. "I feel like emotions were high, excited, probably a little nerves too, but that fifth set I feel like they locked in," said Amherst coach Courtney Rua. "Hayley Russell, honestly, she had those few, I don't know four or five kills there and I just felt all the energy was on our side." Russell, a junior, had a great game, no doubt. She beat Walsh Jesuit's double-block to tie the game at 9 and then had back-to-back kills to put Amherst in front, 12-11, for the first time in the final set. Walsh did tie it at 12, but Russell made a well-placed, soft kill to put the Comets back up and senior Kendal Dobbins finished it off with two strong kills. Russell had only three kills in the first four sets but came on when it counted most. She had five kills in the final set and had four aces throughout the match. "We tried to serve them off the court," said Russell. "They struggled the first time. Our mentality was to try to get them out of system. I just wanted to win. The game isn't over until we say it's over." Dobbins was strong early, getting 21 kills for the match. "We just wanted to get the fire," said Dobbins. "We wanted to win this game and we knew we could make it happen. We knew we would do whatever it took to make it happen." Avon dominated its match from start to finish and stopped what few runs Eastlake North had, particularly in the second set when the Eagles saw an 11-point lead, 14-3, whittled to 19-13 down the stretch. Londyn Stone finished with 12 kills and Bethany Sherwood had 10 to lead Avon. Stone had five aces and Lilly Hamilton three. Sherwood also had six blocks. Ally Bredinger came up with 15 digs while Kaitlyn Pojman had 14 assists. Sherwood admitted it was tough to stay mentally in the game with the lead at times. "Sometimes it is hard to stary focused," she said. "We're making some errors, some unforced errors and we're really not paying attention but as long as we keep our goal in mind, we can really focus on that goal." "I never know when my last game is," said Hamilton. "We have to go in with the mentality that you never know when your last game is. Every team wants to beat you. They're going to give it their best shot. I'm super-proud of this team. I just want to go out on a high my senior year." "We just reminded the seniors that they got the first Avon district championship and now the second and third," said Avon coach Kara Coffman. "Really cool for them. We just wanted them to have fun every step of the way." Contact Tim Gebhardt at 329-7135 or timothygeb@msn.com.