JHHS Volleyball vs. Oskaloosa
In their first game of the 2017 season, the Jackson Heights High School varsity volleyball team lost to the Oskaloosa Bears — a defeat that Head Coach Denise Visocsky said was “irritating” to the Lady Cobras.
That is, until the Cobras and the Bears met again on Tuesday.
“We let that first one slip early in the season,” Visocsky said. “This time, we really put a lot of pressure on to that, and I think we did well from the get-go, just pushing through it.”
The Cobras walked away from Tuesday’s Northeast Kansas League rematch with Oskaloosa with a hard-fought, straight-set win in McLouth, taking the first game 25-18 before struggling to get the second win on a 27-25 score.
“They started to figure out a couple of things,” Visocsky said of the second game against the Bears. “But our girls finally started to fight back, and I’m really proud of how they fought through it. We were down a couple of times late in the game, but we came back, tied it up and fought through it to get the win at the end.”
Visocsky said the Lady Cobras are currently on their “second go-around” in the NEK League, and they are looking to improve on some of their previous outings with league opponents, such as Oskaloosa.
“We’re starting to connect at the net, which is helping us out a lot. We’ve really focused on getting more set at the net in the last two weeks,” she said.
Before their victory over the Bears, the Lady Cobras beat McLouth in straight sets, 25-21 and 25-13. Visocsky said the Lady Cobras “struggled a little bit getting started” in the first match against the Bulldogs, but once they found their groove, there was no stopping them.
“We seem to have a tendency to not start very well out of the gate,” she said. “But we got settled in, got the first win under our belt and cruised through the second game.”
Top players for the Lady Cobras on Tuesday were Abby Williams, Karley Dieckmann and Kate Lierz, with Visocsky noting that the latter “really stepped up and hit some key shots for us, which made a big difference.”
After Tuesday night’s play, the Cobras are now at third place in the NEK League with a 5-4 league record and an overall 12-8 record. Oskaloosa’s records fell to 4-5 in the league and 7-13 overall, keeping them at fourth, while McLouth remains at the bottom of the league standings with records of 1-8 in the league and 5-16 overall.
The JV Lady Cobras also had a good night on Tuesday, beating McLouth 25-18 and 25-16 before going on to win against Oskaloosa 25-17 and 25-18.
The Lady Cobras’ next outing will be a Saturday tournament at Valley Falls, where Visocsky said the host team will present a major challenge for the Cobras, and there will be a mix of league and non-league teams.
“We’re going to have some tough teams,” Visocsky said.
