HOPE — One thing that made a difference in Tuesday night’s volleyball contest between Hauser and Jennings County — errors.
The Jets made mistakes, and the Panthers capitalized to come away with a 25-18, 25-17, 25-19 season-opening victory.
“It’s definitely been an improvement for us. We generally start off pretty slow, so that was really good, especially being the first game of the year,” Jennings coach Toby Harrell said. “These girls have struggled to be mentally ready. We really focused on mental aggression and mental stability and mental strength. I couldn’t be prouder because they came out first game of the year against one of the more solid teams that we play.”
Hauser and Jennings stayed even early in the opening set, but then the Panthers turned the intensity the led to Jet mistakes and opened the lead to 14-7 to force a timeout from Hauser. The Jets scored two quick points following the timeout, but the deficit was too much to overcome.
Jennings kept the momentum going to start the second set by jumping out to a 5-1 lead, but Hauser came back to tie it at 7-7. The Panthers then scored four of the next five points to jump ahead 11-8. The Jets couldn’t string together a rally. With Jennings leading 22-17, they scored the final three of the set to go ahead in the match two sets to none.
Hauser went in front 9-4 to open up the third set, but the Panthers came back to take the lead at 12-11. After the Jets scored two points, Jennings scored four of the next five points to lead 16-14. With Hauser leading 17-16, the Panthers scored nine of the next 11 points to end the match.
“Overall, we have a lot of things that we need to work on,” Hauser coach Jeff Case said. “It’s the first game of the season. We can see what we need to work on. To gain experience and to get better, we got to go through hard times, and we definitely through a hard time tonight. We’ve got to gain something from it, we’ve got to learn something from it, and hopefully, we’ll do that.”
For Hauser, Andie Clark finished with 22 digs and two aces. Charlie Clark had 13 digs and six kills, Adrianna Musillami finished with 21 assists and six digs, Kenze Bostic had eight kills and Kayden Miller added two aces.
For Jennings, Alivia Elmore finished with 21 digs and four kills, Megan Vogel had four kills and two aces, Lydia Roth had 24 digs, Zoie Suhre finished with nine blocks, Lily Ernstes had six blocks and Charlee Barlow added nine kills.
