PONCA – Thursday night marked the season opener for a pair of northeast Nebraska volleyball teams.
From Ponca high school, WHS visited the Indians in a Class C1 at C2 matchup.
In the opening set, Wayne High took care of business with a 25-6 win before holding on in extras during the second set, 30-28. The final set went back to the Blue Devils 25-16 to perform the season opening sweep at 1-0 while the Indians fell to 0-1.
Earlier scores saw the Wayne C-team win in three sets (17-21, 21-15, 15-8) and Wayne JV win 25-14, 25-23.
Leading the way for WHS in the kill department was Lauren Pick with 19 to go along with four aces. Emily Armstrong followed with nine kills and five each from Frankie Klausen (five digs) and Sydney Redden. Hailey Backer posted a team-high seven digs to go with four aces while Erin O’Reilly and Redden both tabbed three aces. Kiara Krusemark recorded a team-high 34 set assists.
Kaci Day posted a team-high nine kills for Ponca followed by Alyssa Crosgrove with seven and five kills as well as four blocks from Josei Reid. Graven Evans and Crosgrove both tallied a team-high nine digs while Morgan Nelson paced the team with 22 set assists.
The Wayne High volleyball was preseason tabbed #6 in the Class C1 Omaha World Herald rankings while in the Lincoln Journal Star, WHS was ranked #5 in the preseason poll.
Defending champions Wahoo were at the top of the OWN poll followed by Lincoln Lutheran; Kearney Catholic; St. Paul and Syracuse in the top five. Following Wayne is #7 Broken Bow; #8 Norfolk Catholic; #9 North Bend and #10 Columbus Scotus.
LJS: #1 Wahoo; #2 Lincoln Lutheran; #3 St. Paul; #4 Columbus Scotus; #5 Wayne; #6 Kearney Catholic; #7 Syracuse; #8 Lincoln Christian; #9 Minden and #10 Battle Creek (moving up from C2).
Wayne High will next compete in the Northeast Nebraska Volleyball Classic starting Thursday, September 5 while Ponca will visit Laurel-Concord-Coleridge on Tuesday, September 3.