As season openers go, Polk County volleyball coach Molly Hill couldn’t have asked for a better one Wednesday night.

The Wolverines weren’t in midseason form, but they were more than good enough to sweep Rosman, handing the Tigers a 25-19, 25-17, 25-20 setback in the season opener for both teams.

Polk County freshman Mireya Roman slammed home the first point of the game and the Wolverines were on their way, rarely trailing though Rosman kept each set close.

“We had a lot of first-game jitters, even with our varsity players, which surprised me,” said Hill. “Once we got past that, we played our game. I’m proud of them.”

The Wolverines raced to a 14-4 lead in the first set, but Rosman used good defense and the hitting of Christa Galloway to fight back to within 15-12 before Hill called a timeout. The Wolverines still held a 21-19 lead before the key point of the set, a long rally that featured a handful of diving digs on both sides of the net and a pair of blocks by Polk’s Ansley Lynch before Reagan Waddell won a battle at the net, tapping a free ball home for a Wolverine point. Two points later, Waddell closed the set with a kill.

The final two sets were close throughout, with Polk County pulling away late to win each. In all three, Hill noticed two trends that were a bit of a surprise.

“In practice, we’ve been working a substantial amount of time on serving and serve receive. I felt like we needed that,” Hill said. “Today I was really impressed, JV and varsity, with our serving and serve receive. I thought we passed extremely well.

“In our practices we’ve been excellent on offense, and today we struggled a little bit with that. I think that had a lot to do with the first-game jitters. Hopefully now that we’ve got the nerves out of our system and we’ve gotten the first game out of the way, I think we’ll do well on offense.”

Waddell has 12 kills, 24 digs and four aces for the Wolverines, with Addie Lynch notching seven kills and seven digs. Georgia Garrett had 17 assists, 10 digs and three aces while Lauren Ketwitz had seven aces and seven digs and Kendall Hall finished with 31 digs.

– by polksports.com