The Warrenton Lady Warriors earned a hard fought five set win Friday to win their season opener at home.
Warrenton (1-0) beat Ft. Zumwalt East in five sets. With the win, Warrenton avenged three losses to the Lions last season. The Lady Warriors overcame a tough first set to win the match. After losing the first set 25-14, the Lady Warriors won the next two sets 25-23 and 25-21. They lost the fourth set 25-23 before winning the match-deciding fifth set 15-4.
“This was a great opening win for the Warriors and was a total team effort,” Warrenton volleyball coach Randy Kindschuh said.
Zoe Klaus led the Lady Warrior offensive attack with 16 kills and a 43.8% average. Rayne Van Reed added 10 kills for Warrenton. Emily Likes directed the Warrenton offense with 30 assists. She added seven points and three aces from the service line. Maggie Davis recorded three aces and 12 points on 18 serves.
After starting slowly, Kindschuh believes the Lady Warriors gradually got better throughout the course of the match. The Ft. Zumwalt East middle attackers were high quality. The Lady Warriors also were not serving well enough to challenge the Ft. Zumwalt East attackers early on.
“Our middles weren’t challenging them, and so we challenged them in a couple timeouts,” Kindschuh said. “Because they weren’t getting that high. They were hitting it hard. I said just get your hands in front of the ball and that’s what they did. And so we had quite a few blocks. And then we started making some plays defensively. So we gradually got better.”
After jumping out to a 18-10 second set lead, the Lady Warriors held on for a 25-23 second set win. After splitting the third and fourth sets, the Lady Warriors used a strong start to win the last set 15-4. Kindschuh believes the strong start to the set was key to Warrenton’s victory, especially after Ft. Zumwalt East won a close fourth set.
With Ft. Zumwalt East and Warrenton being placed in the same district, Kindschuh stressed the benefits to winning the match. He added how important it was to win the five set match. The Lady Warriors continued their success in five sets from last season. Warrenton went 4-0 in five set matches last season.
“I think they (Ft. Zumwalt East) were getting tired,” Kindschuh said. “It looked like they were getting tired. Because we served pretty well. If I had to pick one thing that we did really well, it was serving. And we were attacking with the serve and getting them out of system where they were passing the ball all over the place. And I think that wore them down.”
Warrenton played at St. Clair Tuesday. They will play at Orchard Farm Thursday. The game is slated to begin at 5:15 p.m.