Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – There is often a compromise that many volleyball coaches are comfortable with when it comes to aggressive serving.

The more aggressive a team is at the service line the more service errors that are committed.

That is the tradeoff most coaches sign off on.

Not Keeley Arnold.

Yes, the second-year West High coach preaches tough serving but Arnold isn’t about to let that aggressiveness come at the cost of efficiency.

“She expects us to be aggressive but she expects every serve to be in,” West High senior libero Katherine Kouba said. “We work on everything with serving. We work on different serves, different situations, we don’t always serve 100 percent but we are always aggressive with it.”

West High was certainly aggressive at the service stripe on Tuesday in a Mississippi Valley Conference match with Cedar Rapids Jefferson and while the Trojans weren’t 100 percent at the line they were more than efficient enough.

Class 5A ninth-ranked West High (6-4, 2-1) used its aggressive serving and a balanced offensive attack to sweep Cedar Rapids Jefferson 15-17, 25-21, 25-13 in a Valley Division matchup in Iowa City.

The Trojans finished with 11 ace serves from five different players while improving to 6-4 on the season and 2-1 in Mississippi Valley Conference play.

“I feel like we could have been a little bit more consistent, I’ll be interested to see the percentages but the ones that we got over were tough,” Arnold said. “That is something that we’ve been focusing on. 95 percent or better is always our goal I don’t think we got that tonight but the aces made it better.”

West High consistently had the J-Hawks out of system with its aggressive serving that came with only seven service errors.

Kouba had a team-high four aces while sophomore Melae’ Lacy had three and senior Sydney Woods added two.

“Half of our practice is serving and serve receive and there are no soft serves,” Lacy said. “We want to make everyone better and we can’t make each other better if we are putting in soft serves.”

It was the serving of Kouba that helped West High take control of the opening set.

With the opening set even at 8-8, West High rattled off eight consecutive points with Kouba at the service line.

Kouba had three ace serves during the 8-0 spurt and had the J-Hawk back row scrambling on several other occasions.

“We start every day in practice we work on serving and we try to be aggressive and super consistent,” Kouba said. “It all starts for us at the service line.”

Cedar Rapids Jefferson stopped the run with a Zaria Larsen kill but West High sophomore setter Emma Stammeyer had an ace and Lacy had an ace serve as West High scored six of the next seven points to take a 22-9 lead.

It was more of the same in the second set as West High broke open a 20-20 tie late by scoring five of the final six points to win the set 25-21.

Lacy had an ace to cap a 3-0 burst that snapped the 20-all tie.

After committing three service errors in each of the opening two sets the Trojans had just one in the third set while rolling to a 25-13 win to complete the sweep.

As good as West High was at the service line it was equally impressive in serve receive with Kouba, a senior Libero with more than 1,000 career digs under her belt leading the way.

“Our serve receive I thought was a little bit shaky at the beginning but then we were able to build some confidence in it,” Arnold said. “Compared to last week against Xavier this was a lot better.”

Five different Trojans finished with at least five kills led by Lacy who had a match-high 12.

Lacy had four kills in each of the three sets including two during a 5-0 burst in the third set that gave the Trojans a 24-12 lead.

“It helps a lot to have all these great hitters,” Lacy said. “It’s a lost of stress on my body being the only one that is able to put it down so we have a lot of good hitters this year and it’s helping me a lot and making us a lot better team.”

Raina Pfeifer had eight kills, Carmen Crabtree and Woods each had six and Stammeyer added five to go with 20 assists.

Sophia Deyak had three kills and two blocks for the Trojans.

“Our defenders are so solid that we are able to set all three of our hitters and that’s big,” Kouba said. “That allows us to do a lot more on offense.”

West High                  25  25  25

CR Jefferson             17  21  13

West High (Kills-aces-blocks)

Emma Stammeyer 5-1-1, Melae’ Lacy 12-3-0, Emma Dunlap 0-1-0, Raina Pfeifer 8-0-0, Carmen Crabtree 6-0-1, Katherine Melae’ Lacy Kouba 0-4-0, Sydney Woods 6-2-0, Sophia Deyak 3-0-2, Totals 40-11-4.

Assists – Emma Stammeyer 20, Emma Dunlap 13

Cedar Rapids Jefferson (Kills-aces-blocks)

Aubrey Luvan 0-2-0, Jariah Harris 5-0-0, Emma Slings 5-0-1, Lily Weldon 7-0-0, Zaria Larsen 4-1-0, Kelsey Knudsen 2-0-0, Totals 23-3-1.

Assists – Allie Barlow 16

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