By Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

TIFFIN – Sheyanne Koethe and her Clear Creek Amana teammates spent the past several weeks working on getting off to a good start.

Even in practice the Clippers never started as strong as they did on Thursday.

Clear Creek Amana scored the first seven points in its season opener against Solon and never looked back on its way to a 25-5, 25-21 win in the opening game of a quadrangular.

Clear Creek Amana seniors McKenna McCreedy, Lauren Helle, Sheyanne Koethe“We have worked really hard on starting strong in the first six points at practice but you never expect it to go like that,” Koethe said. “We have worked a lot on starting strong and that’s what we did, we came out strong the first six points of the game.”

Clear Creek Amana finished 1-1 at the season-opening quadrangular dropping their second match 25-16, 25-13 to Class 3A second-ranked Mount Vernon.

Solon (0-2) fell to 3A No. 10 Center Point-Urbana 25-20, 25-19 in their final match.

“It was good to see the speed and this level of competition on the first night,” first-year Solon coach Sarah Ferin said. “It shows us what we need to do and will certainly help prepare us for the rest of the season.”

Koethe got the Clippers off to the start they had been working toward.

The senior Libero had a three ace serves during the 7-0 spurt to open the season that put Solon in a hole it could never dig out of.

“To be quite honest we have been working on starting better because this summer we learned we aren’t starting very well and we were the team that was getting down by seven or eight points, so we were trying to prevent that,” Clear Creek Amana coach Jackie Clubb said. “It looked like we came through with doing that tonight.”

Koethe gave Clear Creek Amana a 3-0 lead with back-to-back ace serves before a Solon error made it 4-0 and forced a Spartan timeout.

Another Koethe ace, a Solon error and a kill by Shauntina Willams put Clear Creek up 7-0.

“Serving is kind of my thing, I love going back to serve,” Koethe said. “I feel like I’m in control back there so I came out thinking about getting the first ball over and in and then being aggressive.”

Clear Creek Amana was just getting going.

The Clippers used another seven-point run to take a 14-2 lead and took a 22-3 advantage with a 8-0 spurt.

Lauren Helle, Riley Hennes and Mackenzie Justice all had two kills in the opening set.

“We are not set on one set lineup, I’ve never been that type of coach,” Clubb said. “Whatever we need that’s what we put in and they handled that very well.”

Clear Creek Amana jumped to a 3-1 lead in the second set and never trailed while completing the sweep.

Solon pulled to within 24-21 on an ace block and kill by Taylor Noonan on consecutive plays but could get no closer.

“It was a lot of nerves,” Ferin said. “We just couldn’t get into a rhythm we finally did a little more in the second set.”

Hennes and Justice led Clear Creek Amana with six kills in the win over Solon while Helle added four and Koethe collected 13 digs.

Helle had four kills and Koethe had 11 digs in the loss to Mount Vernon.

“We need to serve receive pass well and stay in system and kind of run our kind of offense and not let two or three points get scored on us at a time at we will be fine but Mount Vernon is a great team,” Clubb said. “We have a lot of respect for them.”

Clear Creek Amana 25 25

Solon                       5   21

(Kills-Aces-Blocks)

Clear Creek Amana

Sheyanne Koethe 2-3-0, Riley Hennes 6-1-0, Shauntina Williams 3-0-0, Lauren Helle 4-0-2, Karsyn Stratton 2-0-0, Mackenzie Justice 6-1-0, Jordan Neely 0-1-0, Team 23-5-2.

Assists – Zoey Boehme 8, Riley Hennes 4, Sheyanne Koethe 2.

Solon

Grace Keith 3-0-0, Jess Heick 0-0-0, Abby Smith 1-1-0, Rachel Nelson 0-0-0, Taylor Noonan 1-1-0, Grace McCarty 0-0-0, Paige Gallagher 0-0-0, Ali Dierson 0-0-0, Team 5-1-1.

Assists – Rachel Nelson 5.

Clear Creek Amana 16 13

Clear Creek Amana

Sheyanne Koethe 1-0-0, Zoey Boehme 1-0-0, Shauntina Williams 2-0-0, Lauren Helle 4-0-0, Karsyn Stratton 0-1-0, Jane Willms 2-0-0, Team 10-1-0.

Assists – Riley Hennes 5, Zoey Boehme 3.

Mount Vernon

Rory Light 1-0-0, Catherine Yeoman 4-0-0, Libby Ryan 0-3-0, Katie Wycoff 1-1-0, Wynne Vandersall 4-1-0, Ella Brase 1-0-0, Kaitlyn Volesky 4-0-0, Team 15-5-0.

Assists – Bailey Sullivan 7, Ella Brase 5.