Marshalltown volleyball got a much-needed win on Tuesday, sweeping Waterloo East in the Roundhouse at Marshalltown High School.
The Bobcats won 25-18, 25-18, 25-20 and snapped a six-game winless streak.
“This is big, definitely, because the past week, we’ve really been on a downfall,” MHS senior Laney Danielson said. “So we’ve really practiced hard and focused on the basic stuff which I think really helped tonight.”
Danielson had eight kills and 13 digs for the Bobcats. Ellie Hughes added eight kills and nine digs and Madison Rogers had three total blocks, two solo, three ace serves and 13 digs.
Marshalltown led for almost all of the first two sets, dictating the pace with an aggressive offense that may not have scored on every attack but had the Trojans on their heels.
“We talked a lot about how we have to stop playing safe,” MHS head coach Jen O’Neal said. “We want our hitters to hit and at the same time we want to be smart about it, and I think we did a really good job tonight of having that aggressive offense and taking the swings when we needed to take the swings.”
Rogers’ service run helped the Bobcats lock down the first set, punctuated by a solo block from Danielson.
“Looking back at some stats from the weekend, we didn’t have many ace serves, which told me we were, again, being really safe with our serving,” O’Neal said. “We don’t want them to get an easy pass out of it, we want them out of system.”
Rogers had another lengthy run in the second set and then Danielson started firing away, putting down five of her eight kills in the middle set.
“She’s progressing really nicely,” O’Neal said. “And she also really responds to feedback that we have for her and trying to apply that and she can see the difference when she applies it out there. She’s working really hard to give us that aggressive attack that we need.”
The third set was a little tighter, as Marshalltown’s aggressive attack errors started to push momentum in East’s favor. The Trojans led 11-5 at one point but Marshalltown went on a 10-4 run to pull back even. East jumped back ahead with back-to-back points at 17-15 but the Bobcats got some key contributions from Kennedy Feldman, who had five kills in the third set, and once MHS surged to a 19-17 lead they did not surrender the lead again.
“We have that resiliency, I think our team really does,” O’Neal said. “The third set can be one where you let down a bit or you play at a different level, and we just wanted to recapture playing our game during that moment and not give up. They did a really good job of digging out of that and coming back.”
Marshalltown competes at a Waterloo West tournament on Saturday.
“We just have to keep focusing on our communication, keep talking,” Danielson said, “and keep playing fast to trick the other team.”
