Indians tame Tigers for volleyball district crown

Jackson coach Maile Gannon made sure her team was aware it hadn't won a district championship since 2002.

"Coach took us in the other day and showed us the banner," Jackson senior Jill Rushin said. "She told us to close our eyes and visualize it, so we all visualized seeing the 2009 banner being up there."

The Indians don't need to visualize anymore.

Host Jackson knocked off rival Central 25-22, 25-23 to claim the Class 4 District 1 title Wednesday.

"We were pumped up," Indians senior Rachael Meyr said. "This was our goal."

Jackson advanced to Saturday's sectional round. The Indians will face Cor Jesu at 4:30 p.m. at Kirkwood High School. If they win that match, they will play against the winner of the St. Joseph Academy vs. Lafayette winner in the quarterfinals immediately after Jackson's sectional match.

Central didn't go down without a fight Wednesday.

The Tigers jumped out to an early 3-1 lead in the first game. But Jackson rallied to seize control until Central turned it up a notch.

With the Indians leading 14-9, the Tigers took advantage of a missed dumped ball, a bad spike and an errant dig for a 4-0 run to pull within a point. They would extend that to a 9-1 run, giving them an 18-15 lead.

"We knew it was going to be a difficult match for us," Gannon said. "We knew Cape would pull out everything they had."

"Their back-row attacks were really good," Rushin said. "They kept a lot of our balls off the floor that we tried to kill. They had a great defense."

Despite Central's strong play, the Indians refused to be rattled.

Jackson rallied to tie the game at 20-20 on a crafty dump by Lyndsey Hinkebein.

The Indians would surge ahead 23-21, but a timeout by Central and a bad serve by Jackson got the Tigers to within 23-22.

Rushin made sure they wouldn't get closer.

The senior attacker spiked the next two balls to give Jackson the first game.

"I just tried my hardest to hit the ball as hard as I could," Rushin said. "Sometimes I would kind of miss it, but whenever I got a hold of one, it felt really good."

Rushin finished the match with a game-high 10 kills to go along with 12 digs.

"Jill jumps really well and has a nice reach," Gannon said. "I told her to hammer it cross court and let them try and dig it. We gave Jill the green light to swing away."

The second game was just as entertaining.

Neither team could manage to pull away until Central opened up the biggest lead of the game at 19-15.

"The biggest thing is we didn't let a mistake bring us down," Central coach Charity Huff said. "If we made a mistake, we let it go and moved on to the next play. That was our goal to let it go and focus on the next play.

"We did a good job with our serving tonight. We played some good defense tonight. We just stayed level-headed and focused."

The Indians (22-9) proved to be too much.

With Central still clinging to a 19-15 lead, Gannon called a timeout to regroup her team.

"She told us to settle down," Meyr said. "We were doing fine, just to settle down and do what we knew how to do."

After the timeout, the Indians went on a 7-1 run to grab a 22-20 lead. The Tigers would pull within a point at 24-23, but Hinkebein erased all hope for the Tigers when she spiked the game-winner.

"We just thought about how we didn't want this to be our last game," Rushin said. "We dug really deep and kept it going."

Meyr finished with 23 assists. Ashleigh Lawson added 12 digs, while Cassandra Bollinger added 10 and Taylor Glueck tallied nine.

The Tigers were paced by Charis Stewart's eight kills and five digs. Chelsea Pannier added seven kills and five digs and Meg Goodman added 19 assists. Central finished the season 11-21-2.

"Both teams played excellent tonight," Huff said.