(Story by Stephen McDaniel)
After a tough loss against crosstown rival Ankeny, getting a home win over second-ranked Waukee was crucial for the No. 3 Ankeny Centennial volleyball team.
The Jaguars responded by flipping the script from the Jag-Hawk match, dropping the first set on Tuesday before rallying for a 20-25, 25-21, 25-22, 25-12 victory at home.
“It was very nice and very necessary,” said Centennial coach Jessica Rinehart, who earned her 397th career win. “I was afraid of, if we didn’t get this one tonight, what direction we might go. I think we needed to prove to ourselves that we can play with the top teams and play good ball again.”
Centennial had five days to reflect on its loss to No. 4 Ankeny with no weekend matches, and the Jaguars knew they needed a huge bounce back victory to get them right back on track.
Waukee only had three losses going into the match with two of them coming against No. 1 Waukee Northwest. The Warriors’ other loss came to Ankeny during the Centennial tournament on Aug. 30.
The first set didn’t go exactly how the Jaguars were hoping it would as they only held one brief lead following back-to-back kills from Mady Ott and Ellie Pollock with a Tatem Schmidt ace putting them ahead 7-6 momentarily.
From there, the Warriors took the lead back and were able to keep a couple of points between them all the way to the end of the set.
“The first set I didn’t think we played bad, but we didn’t play as good as we know we can,” Pollock said. “So it was just warming up for us and knowing we have the opportunity to get back to our full potential. That’s what our goal was for the last three sets.”
Waukee was just one step ahead of the Jaguars, and it jumped out to as much as a six-point lead in the second set while threatening to put Centennial down 2-0 in sets.
But a kill from Schmidt to cut the lead down to 21-19 flipped a switch for the Jaguars and altered the direction of the game.
Schmidt’s kill sparked a 7-0 run that turned a 21-18 deficit into a much-needed 25-21 victory to even the match.
Pollock ultimately tied the set at 21-21 by smashing one of her eight kills of the night and tallying one of her three blocks. Sophia Heither gave the Jaguars the lead by recording one of her nine kills.
“In general, I just saw us take a turn for the better,” Rinehart said. “That first game reminded me of Thursday, we hadn’t quite brushed it off and I thought ‘Uh oh.’ But then little by little, I started to see more glimpses of the original us and what we were trying to get back to. Then we caught fire and looked like us.”
And in a crucial third set, the Jaguars proved to have every answer for the Warriors.
Centennial carried its momentum into a 7-2 lead to open up the third set with Heither, Schmidt, Pollock and Kaelyn Rinehart turning a 2-2 tie into a five-point Jaguar lead going into an early Waukee timeout.
Waukee was able to fight its way right back into the set and tied it up two different times, but the Jaguars responded each time.
Tied at 15-15, Schmidt and Heither teamed up for a block and sparked a 4-0 run for the Jaguars. When Waukee tied it back up at 20-20, Pollock got a soft touch to land in open space before back-to-back ace serves from Schmidt put them back ahead by three points.
Ott eventually got the kill to close out the set.
“It feels a lot better to have this be our most recent game to look back on than it is to have Ankeny because we all knew we didn’t play our best against Ankeny,” Pollock said. “I think everyone played about as good as it gets tonight.”
With the Warriors backed up against the wall, the Jaguars released a statement in the fourth set that they’re very much still a top team to beat in the state.
Centennial limited Waukee to just 12 points in the fourth and final set, which ranks as the lowest point total in a single set by the Warriors all season.
The first few points were traded back and forth before Schmidt, Pollock, Maegan Cheeseman and some Warrior hitting errors opened up the door for the Jaguars.
On a night when Centennial celebrated its seniors, the Jaguars got a major spark from senior outside hitter Adilyne Reyes.
Reyes made her first start of the season after previously playing in only 17 sets this season. But she came up with a couple of big points during the fourth set that only fueled the momentum and energy on the Jaguars’ side of the court.
“I’m so happy for her,” Rinehart said. “We started her tonight because she was a senior, and we wanted to see what she could do in a big match and she proved us right. She did a great job. It’s her contagious energy and confidence that keeps her team up that I really love.”
Reyes’ effort to bump the ball over the net on a sharp angle ended up rewarding later on in the point with a kill off a Schmidt assist.
A big Nora Bockes dig and a layout effort to keep the ball up by Pollock led Reyes to touching the ball just off the top of the net and landing it in open space on the following point to put the Jaguars up by six points. She finished the fourth set with four of her seven kills on the night.
Heither got the Centennial lead up to as much as 10 points with a block to make it 17-7. The closest Waukee was able to get it back to was eight points before the Jaguars rattled off a 5-0 run to close the match.
“It was nice to have a little cushion set underneath us,” Pollock said. “But going into the fourth set, we knew that the energy and the confidence was just so high that I could’ve told you we were going to win that set before the first point even started.”
The win improved the Jaguars to 4-2 in the CIML Conference and 18-4 overall. Waukee’s records dropped to 3-2 and 19-4.
One big change that the Jaguars saw between their loss to Ankeny and their win over Waukee was in serving.
Centennial finished the night with 10 aces and completed 94.7 percent of their serves (89-of-94). The Jaguars had just three aces and struggled with serving errors against Ankeny.
Schmidt recorded a team-high 14 kills and led all players with five aces. Kaelyn Rinehart had three aces and Pollock added a pair.
The Jaguars are still battling for positioning in the rankings with Ankeny, Waukee and No. 6 Dowling Catholic behind Waukee Northwest, and the win over the Warriors was crucial for moving Centennial into a third-place tie with the Hawkettes. On Wednesday, the Jaguars moved up to No. 2 in the latest rankings, flipping spots with Waukee.
Dowling still sits ahead of the Ankeny schools with a 4-1 record in the CIML, but the Maroons host Waukee on Thursday and will later end the regular season at Waukee Northwest.
Waukee has been the only team to hand a defeat to the Wolves, but now has suffered back-to-back losses after being swept by Northwest on Sept. 23. Ankeny earned a win over the Jaguars, but then lost at Dowling on Tuesday.
“You can’t judge a team based on their last game because they can do anything against you,” Pollock said. “I think we prepared in practices with game-like situations way more than we did before Ankeny, and that really helped us out physically and mentally.”
Next up for Centennial is a trip to Urbandale on Saturday for the Urbandale Invitational. The Jaguars need three wins to give coach Rinehart her 400th career victory.
