Eagles struggle early, but come back to sweep past Avon Lake

Coming off a reverse-sweep loss on Thursday to Normandy the morale of the Avon boys volleyball team was quite low. And it carried into the next day, when the Eagles faced host Avon Lake.

Suddenly, the team that easily won its first three matches while giving up just one set looked like it was completely new to the sport. Balls were falling to the floor that had no business going untouched. Very little communication was happening. A team that is notorious for its slow starts found itself down, 17-10, in the first set.

“I think a big thing was that their confidence was pretty low since our last match, because against Amherst we had a fantastic start,” said coach Adrian Lee. “They just really feed off the energy, and when the energy is low, they play down. I don’t know what it is. We try to get them fired up. I don’t know if it takes them a while to warm up.”

Slowly but surely, the confidence returned, and the Eagles were able to right the floundering ship. They came back to take a close first set and then dominated the next two to sweep the Shoremen by the scores of 25-23, 25-6 and 25-15 and up their record to 4-1.

“We had a slow start,” said junior John Ling, who had six kills. “I think once we shook that off, we played really well. We got in our own heads, but in the second and third set we really showed up. I think we just needed to take a breath. We took a deep breath and just focused and came through.”

What carried the Eagles to victory was their serving, which resulted in 22 aces. Finn Petzinger and Chad Partridge led the way with seven each, followed by Ling with five and Logan Lam with three.

“That definitely helped,” Lee said. “We’ve really worked on our serving and we’re trying to be a strong serving team. That’s helped us a lot. But, we’ve got to get our serves in. When we don’t, like the first set, it really hurts us.”

Ah, yes. The first set. The Shoremen jumped to a 4-1 lead, but Avon quickly turned that around to go up, 8-6, after consecutive aces by Petzinger. But Avon Lake scored eight of the next nine points on the way to an 11-2 run that put the hosts up, 17-10.

“I called an early timeout and we had a talk,” Lee said. “I was like, ‘Guys, you know how to play volleyball.’ They practice so hard every day. They just have to be confident in themselves and the work they’ve put in. A lot of hesitating was going on, and I told them, ‘Be clear, be loud, just call the ball and go.’ I think that freed them up a little bit. They play better when they’re freed up.”

Things slowly got better, but there wasn’t an immediate turnaround. The Shoremen still held leads of 21-15 and 23-20. However, the Eagles scored the final five points of the set—the last three on aces by Partridge—to complete a 15-6 run and take the set.

“I think that really improved their morale and their confidence,” Lee said. “They were like, ‘Okay, we’ve got this. If we can come back from that, we can do anything.’ They just needed to believe in themselves. I think sometimes when they’re down, they lose that.”

The final two sets were relatively non-competitive. In the second set, Avon scored six consecutive points to go up by 10, 13-3, and after a single Avon Lake point, the Eagles rattled off nine in a row, including another three aces by Partridge, to take a 22-4 lead.

The third set was a little closer, with the Shoremen closing to within three, at 10-7. But Avon went on an 11-4 run to open a 21-11 lead and then closed out the match on the final ace by Partridge.

Ling and Logan Lam led Avon with six kills each, and Petzinger and Partridge each added four.