Comets avenge earlier loss with 3-1 road volleyball win over Chickasaws

By John Burbridge

sports@charlescitypress.com

NEW HAMPTON — The first time they faced Northeast Iowa Conference rival New Hampton this volleyball season, the Charles City Comets got a taste of humble pie.

After CC took a substantial lead in the first set, the Chickasaws got on a roll and kept on rolling while sweeping the Comets 2-0 in an abbreviated match.

The night didn’t get much better for the Comets as they later faced a buzzsaw in the form of the Class 2A No. 1-ranked Denver Cyclones and lost again in straight sets on their own home floor.

Charles City had gone into the triangular ranked No. 5 among Class 4A schools according to the preseason rankings released by the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union, but were subsequently bumped down to No. 14 after the two losses and later knocked out of the Top 15 in the most recent rankings.

But after that “bump in the road”, the Comets managed to go 5-1 going into Tuesday’s away match against New Hampton on a mission to avenge one of the aforementioned losses.

The Chickasaws seemed to pick up where they left off nearly two weeks before while winning the first set (25-22); but the Comets rebounded to play their best match of the season to take the next three sets (25-19, 25-20 … and an extended 29-27 thriller to seal the overall victory).

“We just limited our mistakes,” Charles City head coach Sue Hoefer said about what her team did differently from their last meeting with the Chickasaws. “Before, we were hitting our serves out of bounds … letting balls fall in that we shouldn’t. We did a much better job tonight.”

After the first set, Comet senior Mya Rimrod slapped in an ace to put her team up 11-6 in the second set. The Chickasaws responded with 5 unanswered points with Taylor Ries’s ace tying it at 11, but a dual blocking kill with senior Jadyn Van Horn and sophomore Sofia Parrott working in tandem put the Comets up 16-13 before Miyah Stevenson’s well-placed kill closed the set and evened the match.

An ace by Comet junior Brooklyn Molitor put the Comets up 7-3 in the third set. The Chickasaws eventually caught the Comets to tie it at 19 apiece before kills by Rimrod and junior Evelyn Mayhew put Charles City up by 2 (21-19) before a service ace by Anya Ruzicka made the score 24-20 ahead of Stevenson’s second set-winning kill of the match.

In the fourth set, junior Addyson Vance’s ace gave the Comets a 4-1 lead before a Parrott-to-Rimrod kill gave CC more distance at 7-2.

Eventually, the Comets took a 24-20 lead for what was in essence “quadruple match point” only to have a hitting kill and a blocking kill by Chickasaw senior middle hitter Braelyn Rosonke tie it at 24 to assure an extended set.

New Hampton had several match-point opportunities itself with fans on both sides of the court witnessing the action with trepidation.

Rimrod’s season-high 19th kill of the evening finally put an end to the two-hour-plus match.

Parrott was credited with a season-high 37 assists; Van Horn and Parrott each had four blocking kills while often facing taller opposition; and Ruzicka and Molitor each had three service aces.

Tuesday’s win was one of Charles City’s better defensive efforts as evidenced by four Comets recording double-figures in digs — Ruzicka (22), Rimrod (17), Parrott (16) and Stevenson (14).

Rosonke had a match-high 20 kills, and junior Maici Weber was credited with 35 assists for New Hampton (6-5).

“We changed our lineup a little and rotated more players into the match,” said Hoefer, whose team improved to 8-3 ahead of Thursday’s home triangular against Clear Lake and Mason City. “We just told them [when NH tied it to force an extended fourth set] to keep working. And they did.”

* The following Thursday, the Comets extended their match winning streak to seven with a pair of abbreviated wins over Clear Lake (25-11, 25-16) and Mason City (25-11, 25-8) during a triangular at Comet Gym.

Charles City (10-3) will be back in action next Tuesday (Sept. 17) when it hosts Waukon during “Future Comet Night”.