GREENVILLE – Greenville won its second match of the season on Tuesday, sweeping Trotwood-Madison 25-18, 25-10, 25-6 in Greater Western Ohio Conference competition.
Greenville started the season with seven consecutive losses but then beat Bethel 25-17, 26-24 in a best-of-three-sets match on Saturday in the Troy Invitational. The Lady Wave then picked up their first GWOC win on Tuesday with the victory against Trotwood, improving to 2-8 overall and 1-6 in the conference.
“It feels really good,” Greenville volleyball coach Chelsea Dowd said of winning the two matches. “Last year I don’t think we had a second victory until the very end of the season. At this point we’re a little bit under halfway through, and there are a couple games I think when we see teams that we saw early on in the season and we see them again I hope we’ll be able to change the outcome.”
Against Trotwood-Madison, who fell to 0-6 with Tuesday’s loss, Greenville started a little slow in the opening set. The Rams led 17-15 late in the first game, but then the Lady Wave went on a 10-1 run to close out the set and take a 1-0 lead in the match.
“It’s frustrating when they come out slow, but you know that seems to be our M.O.,” Dowd said. “That’s something that we need to work on for sure, especially in a game like that when you should come out really, really strong. But they stepped it up, and in the second and third game they played exactly the way we wanted them to – and at the end of the first. If we can work on the fast start, we’ll be able to do things a little bit quicker.”
The second set went much better for Greenville, who started out the game on a 7-0 run. The Wave led the rest of the way en route to a 25-10 victory and a two-games-to-none lead.
“In that first game we missed a lot of serves,” Dowd said. “We brought it in after the first game, and I said, ‘Serves over and in, that’s all we need to do.’ And they did. They did exactly that … those two (Morgan Gilbert and Logan Tabler) in particular. It was hilarious because they went on a run – they kept going; they kept going; they kept going – I was like, we’re never going to get out of this rotation, and that’s OK with me if we’re serving the ball.”
Greenville was even more dominant in the third set. The Wave started off the game on a 3-0 run and ultimately won 25-6 to sweep the match.
Cassie Cromwell led Greenville with three kills on Tuesday while Emma Klosterman added two.
Cromwell also had a team-high three blocks, and Klosterman had one.
Tabler had 20 assists to lead the team, and Brooke Stachler had 13. Gilbert had 10 aces, Tabler had five, and Koryann Elliott had three.
“The freshmen in particular or the first-year varsity players have stepped it up considerably,” Dowd said. “We’ve had some really tough losses in the past two weeks, but I think it’s made them stronger on the floor and more mentally tough. They’re not afraid to go up and be aggressive, they are confident when they touch the ball, and that’s the way it needs to be.”
Greenville now will begin a stretch of four consecutive matches on the road beginning with West Carrollton on Thursday.
“I think we’re at a stretch now that the girls feel confident, especially after getting two wins in a row, and they see what they can do when they play consistently and play confidently,” Dowd said.
