Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – A series that has been practically devoid of sweeps over recent years got a rare one on Tuesday night.

Even if it didn’t exactly feel like a sweep.   

Colby Greene had a match high 13 kills and Class 5A ninth-ranked West High made late runs in all three sets to earn a 25-21, 25-20, 25-16 sweep of City High in the annual Battle for the Spike in front of a raucous crowd at City High.  

The win was the third straight for West High in the series and the first sweep in the cross-town matchup since the Women of Troy won in straight sets in 2012.

“Every other year I’ve played this match has been four or five sets so it feels good to win it in three,” Greene said. “It felt a lot closer, in the third set it felt like we’d been playing forever. It didn’t feel like a sweep.”

 

All three sets followed a similar pattern on Tuesday.

The two rivals played nearly even volleyball until a late West High run secured a victory.

West High closed all three sets with a run of four points or longer while improving to 7-4 on the season while City High dropped to 5-6.

“Over the weekend we noticed that on the dot at 12 points we would kind of fade and have a little lull,” West High coach Scott Sanders said. “We were really aware of that today and we tried to just focus in on our passing late in those sets.”

That focus paid dividends as West High snapped late ties with four straight points to close the first set and five straight points to end the second.

West High rattled off eight straight points in the third set, breaking open a one-point lead while securing its ninth win in the last 11 meetings with City High.

“We always peak at 12 points,” West High senior Emily Burtch said. “We’ve talked a lot about that over the last few days just pushing past that point.”

Feeding off the energy from its home crowd, City High used a 6-1 run to build a 19-13 lead in the opening set.

West High battled back, scoring the next seven points to take a 20-19 lead.

“I think it was one little error, it was overpass. It was 19-13 and it could have been 20-13 and instead it switches the other way,” City High coach Craig Pitcher said. “That’s kind of how this team is right now we kind of dwell on that mistake and we forget that we can make more plays the next serve.”  

Burtch had a pair of kills during the critical 7-0 spurt that gave West High its first lead since 8-6.

With the scored tied at 21 West High scored the final four points to secure a see-saw first set that had 13 ties and 14 lead changes.

“We just knew that we had to come back and bring our ‘A’ game,” Burtch said. “We knew we had to fix our errors, that’s really all it was.”

 

It was more of the same in the second set.

City High pulled even at 20 with a 4-1 run that featured a pair of kills from junior Ellie Evans but West High scored the final five points to take a two sets to none lead.

Katie Severt had an ace serve and Cailyn Morgan a kill during the 5-0 spurt that started with a City High serving error.

“I really thought in the first two sets we outplayed them we just had so many more errors than they did,” Pitcher said. “It’s still that mental approach that we have been talking about for six weeks now.”

The biggest run of the match closed out the win for West High.

City High trailed just 17-16 after a kill and ace serve by Mackenzie Murphy but a Claire Overton ace block swung the momentum and the Little Hawks wouldn’t record another point.

Greene had a kill and an ace block in the match-clinching 8-0 run that also featured three ace serves by Keimoney Lang.

“We just knew we had to play smart volleyball and find shots,” Greene said. “We were able to do that late in every set.”

Burtch had five kills and two ace blocks in her first extended action in the Battle of the Spike.

“She is like a silent killer out there,” Sanders said of Burtch. “She does her job and that’s the way she leads. She hasn’t had a ton of varsity experience but she’s making her mark.”

Kelsey Law led City High with eight kills while Evans added seven.

West High      25  25  25

City High       21  20  16

Kills-aces-blocks

West High

Cailyn Morgan 5-0-0, Maddie Laffey 1-0-0, Katie Severt 2-3-0, Claire Overton 0-1-0, Emily Burtch 5-0-2, Keimoney Lang 0-3-0, Colby Greene 13-2-2, Team 26-8-5.

Assists – Katie Severt 14.

City High

Lindsey Bolton 1-2-0, Mackenzie Murphy 2-2-2, Ellie Evans 7-0-1, Kelsey Law 8-0-0, Mia Loughran 5-0-2, Cecilia Aldrich-Ingram 1-0-0, Team 24-6-3.

Assists – Lindsey Bolton 19.