Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – With five underclassmen and no seniors in its regular rotation West High is a young team.

A month into the season first-year head coach Jaedynn Evans has watched a relatively inexperienced team grow.

On Tuesday the young Trojans continued to grow up.

Class 5A ninth-ranked West High rallied from a five-point deficit late in the second set on its way to a 25-15, 25-22, 25-20 sweep of Class 4A No. 13 Western Dubuque (11-7, 3-2) in a Mississippi Valley Conference Mississippi Division match in Iowa City.

“They want to win which is huge, every team wants to win but they have really been turning a corner in practice,” Evans said of her team. “They have really been working hard.”

Junior Iowa State commit Sophia Austen led West High with 12 kills and freshman Cyan Blommer added 10 as West High improved to 15-4 on the season and 3-1 in MVC play.

After opening the season 11-1, West High had gone 3-3 in its previous six matches before its win on Tuesday.

“We are definitely more comfortable now than at the start of the season,” West High junior setter Lila Eastvold said. “I feel like we are just really blending well together.”

West High (15-4, 3-1) showed some maturity in its win on Tuesday.

Playing for the first time since a four-set loss at Cedar Rapids Xavier on September 16 the Trojans never trailed in a 25-15 win in the opening set.

“We try to push as hard as we can right away to get a comfortable lead,” West High sophomore Taylor Otte said. “That’s how we always want to try to start.”

Otte played a key role in the strong start for West High.

The 6-foot-1 sophomore middle had two of her four kills and a key block in the opening set.

“You always want to establish the middle first and keep the blockers there so then we can go to our pins later in the match,” Eastvold said. “We have a lot of strong pins but I feel like we have a lot of strong middles too.”

West High looked like a veteran team after falling into a five-point hole late in the second set.

An ace serve from Western Dubuque junior standout Kyla Ramler gave the Bobcats a 19-14 lead and forced a West High timeout.

A Blommer kill stopped the Bobcat run and Otte had a pair of ace serves in what turned into a 7-0 West High spurt that gave the Trojans a lead they would never give up.

“It showed a lot of grit, they really wanted it and it showed,” Evans said. “They wanted it more and to come back and win that set it really took a few girls taking control from the service line especially.”

Austen secured the second-set win with a kill.

“We came together and we have a really good connection,” Otte said. “We know what we have to do in those situations.”

West High trailed 15-14 in the third set but scored the next three points behind kills from Austen and Blommer and never trailed again.

Freshman Josephine Austen had four of her five ace serves in the third set and Otte had an ace serve in the final set finishing with a match-high six aces.

West High had 13 aces as a team.

“We’ve made a lot of errors serving in some matches but tonight was really good,” Otte said. “Coach likes it when we put pressure on with our serves.”

Sophomore Audrey Small finished with five kills while Otte had four as West High finished with a 34-27 edge in kills.

“We’ve been kind of preaching as a coach staff that we have to be able to use other people,” Evans said. “We don’t want to become too predictable and we have the offensive arms to be able to do that especially when we are getting good passes from our back row.”

Western Dubuque              15  22  20

West High                              25  25  25

Western Dubuque (Kills-aces-blocks)

Evelyn White 3-0-0, Lola Quagliano 1-0-0, Mya Hogrefe 0-2-0, Racquel Fern 0-1-0, Kyla Ramler 14-1-3, Ellie Berning 7-0-1, Evelynn Koopmann 1-0-1, Sylvia Kruse 1-0-0, Totals 27-4-5.

Assists – Lola Quagliano 23

West High (Kills-aces-blocks)

Cyan Blommer 10-1-0, Lila Eastvold 2-1-0, Taylor Otte 4-6-1, Sophia Austen 12-0-1, Audrey Small 5-0-0, Josephine Austen 1-5-0, Totals 34-13-2.

Assists – Lila Eastvold 26

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