LOGAN— The Logan volleyball team didn’t waste any time Thursday as the Grizzlies dominated Kearns High School on their way to a 3-0 nonregion victory.
The first game started out close, as both teams battled back and forth until Logan’s Brittany Wilcox made an amazing diving save that fueled Logan to go on an 8-1 run. Finishing the game off right was Logan’s Berkley Anderson with a monster kill for a 25-19 first set win. Anderson had two aces in the first set and nine kills total on the night.
“I think we did okay,” Logan head coach Dan Noack said. “There were a few points that we were sluggish on but we were able to pick it back up and run a little bit cleaner of an offense.”
Most of Kearns points in the first game came off unforced errors.
“They’re an extremely scrappy team and they picked up a lot of balls on us that we usually put down,” Noack said. “The biggest thing I kept telling the girls was is we gotta make sure we’re playing our game on our side of the net.”
After falling behind 3-0 in the secont set, Nicole Peacock got Logan on the board with back-to-back kills, leading the team with 10 for the night. Kearns maintained the lead however even after a big Sammy Parkinson block. Down 11-6, Noack called timeout to help get his team focused again.
“There were times when we’d get down,” Logan’s Katie Peterson said. “And we’d have to have a little timeout and have coach talk to us to get the energy back up and to keep playing hard. He just told us they’re really good at defense and were giving us free balls, and that we just had to put it down harder and get good passes on the easy stuff they threw over.”
The timeout worked and Logan found its stride again going on an 8-0 run. The Grizzlies continued to control the second set with great play at the net to win 25-18.
“I think Nicole played really solid all across the net,” Noack said. “She had kills on the left side of the net, she had kills on the right side of the net. Brittany also had a lot of good pick-ups and passes to our setter which always makes it easier on her. I think our setter played great today too, with how many balls they were hitting all over she kinda had to pick her battles and decide whether she should stay and play defense or break to the net.”
Being up two games to none, the Grizzlies went for the kill and jumped to an early 16-6 lead. Taylor Larsen kept pushing Logan forward with back-to-back kills to end the game at 25-16.
“I think it was a good win,” Peterson said. “But we all have stuff to improve on. I need to work better on my approach but we’ll be okay.”
Logan will face stiffer competition when they play valley-rival Mountain Crest next week.
“They’re really good. We lost to them last year, but I think as long as we keep our energy up and stay positive through the whole game we can beat them,” Peterson said.
“The biggest thing is keep building on what we’ve done,” Noack said. “Keep building our offense, make it stronger, keep building our defense, make it stronger and I really think it comes down to passing consistently. If we can keep our passes at the net where they’re supposed to be we can play really solid against any team.”