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Emotion, spirit carry Clovers past Tiger Cubs
Anyone who has ever seen a high school volleyball match knows that dealing with emotion is a big part of which team wins each match.
On Thursday night, Cloverdale had even more emotion than usual to draw upon on its matchup against county rival Greencastle.
Clover head coach Sam Jones was injured in an automobile accident after practice on Tuesday, and was limited to watching the action via a Facebook live video stream.
Veteran coach Jim Spencer was recruited merely hours before Thursday’s match to lead the Clovers, and the team responded with a 3-1 victory.
So how strange was it for the players to enter such a huge contest with a mostly unknown coach?
“It was very weird,” Clover junior Hailey Thomas said. “I love playing with the girls we have, but not having [coach] Jones it was a different energy we had to provide.”
Classmate Kenzie Stoltz agreed.
“It was a different environment,” Stoltz said. “Not having Jones on the floor was different. If we need to be yelled at, he would do it. We kind of had to do that for ourselves tonight.”
Greencastle won the first set 25-12, but the Clovers rebounded to take the next two sets by 25-22 margins.
Cloverdale used a 6-0 run early in the match to take a 12-7 lead and never trailed again in clinching the victory.
For Thomas and Stoltz, Jones was their third different head coach during their high school careers.
With Jones unlikely to be able to return to the sidelines, Spencer becomes the fourth.
The former North Putnam educator and coach of many different sports is not devoid of a volleyball background, having coached the Cougars during the early 2000s when the team had a standout squad and was ranked in the top five in the state. Spencer also was an assistant coach in Fort Wayne earlier in his career.
Spencer currently serves as Cloverdale’s softball coach, and while he knows those athletes well who also perform in volleyball, he admits not being acquainted with the non-softball playing team members.
“It was very strange,” he said. “I think I found out about 4:00 that I would be able to have the opportunity to coach them if I wanted to. Coach Jones has been doing a great job with these girls, and we had a little meeting when they got here to go over what they have been doing and get on the same page.”
All things considered, the evening went well for the Clovers.
“We had some times when I was talking in one language and they were talking in another language,” Spencer admitted. “We tried to mesh what they know and what they were doing with what I was seeing. They are well-prepared, and that made it easy for me to talk to them.”
Spencer acknowledged the team was highly inspired to win its first match since Jones was injured.
“They really wanted to win for him,” he said. “It’s a very unfortunate situation, and we all wish him the best. We will be able to communicate by film and phone.”
Cloverdale led 13-9 midway through the third set and had a 4-0 run a few points later to take command at 18-11. Hannah Rady served the final three of those points, including one ace.
Greencastle fought back, cutting the gap to 19-13 before running off five points of its own. The last four of those were served by Allison Stevens to cut the deficit to 19-18.
The Tiger Cubs could get no closer, though, and Stoltz had three straight kills down the stretch to push her team on to the win and a 2-1 lead.
Cloverdale jumped out to an early 6-3 lead in what would be the final set, before freshman Anna Zellers served three straight points (including an ace) to put her team up 7-6.
After Stoltz recorded a kill to force a sideout, she took over at the service line and served five straight points — the last three of which were aces — to put her team ahead to stay at 12-7.
Greencastle cut the gap to 13-11, but Rady served five straight points for an 18-11 advantage.
Cloverdale was able to hold on and complete the victory, but the Clover juniors know the victory was not as significant as the bigger mountains that have yet to be climbed.
“There was no way we were going to lose this match,” Stoltz said. “We came in with a lot of passion. It gives us confidence, but we can’t settle. We have to keep practicing hard and working to get better if we want to win the county.”
Thomas has enjoyed the season so far, despite the bumps in the road this week.
“It’s been a great season so far,” she said. “It’s been odd the past couple of days. It meant a lot to win not having Jones, but we can’t be satisfied with this.”
Greencastle’s offense was led by Stevens with 12 kills, while Ivy Wright had nine kills and Jada Amis had eight kills.
Jalyn Duff added 20 assists.
“The Cubs struggled to get all parts of the offense moving at the same time,” coach Maggie Walters said.
Defensively, Lilly Meyer recorded 22 digs and Wright added 16. The Cubs take on North Montgomery next Wednesday evening.
Statistics were not available from Cloverdale.
Spencer will have the first practice with his new team today, and has a lot of respect for Greencastle — which has won the last five county titles.
“Greencastle is a good team, and they do a lot of things that will hurt us if we see them again,” he said. “This match is over, and doesn’t have anything to do with the next one. It’s a rivalry win, but they don’t put up any banners for winning it.”
Winning the match was icing on the cake for Spencer, who was using the night to evaluate the players and formulate a plan moving forward.
“My objective was to get a good observation of our players and what they can do and what they are trying to do,” he said. “And for the ones I don’t know, to get a better idea of their mentality. [Today] we are going to meet and have some time to walk through some things and try to bridge that 50-year age gap.”
The Clovers are idle until hosting Owen Valley on Tuesday.
