HOLMES TOWNSHIP — Colonel Crawford’s Rylee Ritzhaupt entered Tuesday night’s game with Wynford as the second-rated hitter in the Northern 10 Athletic Conference.
What’s more, Reagan Ritzhaupt is sixth.
The two girls and their teammates controlled the net over the final three games and came away with a 23-25, 25-19, 25-6, 25-20 win.
With the win, the Eagles improved to 3-2 in the N10, 7-2 overall, while the Royals fell to 2-3 in the conference, 3-5 overall.
Wynford took it to the Eagles in the first game, leading by as many as six midway through the set before getting an Emma Steiger kill and a score off a Crawford serve to end it.
“We just had to minimize our errors,” Col. Crawford coach Taylor Kelso said. “We were beating ourselves. I told the girls we’ve got to pick it up and control the game.
“Our block was a little ugly at the beginning, and I told them we had to press over and be big up there,” Kelso added. “We’re a good blocking team and we finally got some blocks on them.”
Wynford coach Clara Adelsperger felt that her team got off to a good start, but the Eagles did a better job in the final three games.
“We were communicating,” Adelsperger said. “We were serving better and it kind of all fell apart after that. We lost 25-6 and our serving really hurt us. We had 12 hitting errors in the second set.
“Once they got some hands on our shots, I think we got a little bit intimidated,” she added. “And we weren’t able to get around them as much as we did in the first set.”
After Wynford took a 9-7 lead early in the second set, Crawford took control of the net. Rylee Ritzhaupt scored four points on kills and three more on blocks while Reagan Ritzhaupt added three kills and a block, propelling the Eagles to a 25-19 win.
Crawford also controlled the third set, breaking a 2-2 tie by scoring seven straight points on the serve of Abby Martin. Mira Holt added two blocks in the run.
After the Royals scored twice on a pair of Reese McGuire kills, Crawford went on an eight-point run off the serve of Alivia Treisch, giving the Eagles a 22-5 lead and the win.
Wynford held a 6-4 lead early in the fourth set, but the game was tied at 11-11 on a serve from Wynford’s Clareese Prenger before Crawford regained its footing, getting kills from both Ritzhaupt’s and a Martin kill to take a 15-12 lead. Crawford increased the lead to 18-12 on three Emma Scott points.
From there, Wynford outscored Crawford, 8-7, but the Eagles won the game, 25-20.
“We played very well at the end,” Kelso said. “My outsides picked it up and my number one, Mira (Holt) had some good swings up there.
“We’re a very aggressive team but we have to minimize our errors and when we minimize our errors we win games,” she added.
“Our seniors really have to step up,” Adelsperger said. “We have six seniors on the court, and they have to pull together. We just have to put more effort early.”
The Eagles meet unbeaten Mohawk (5-0, 9-0) on Thursday, and Kelso said that winning against the Royals was critical coming into the Mohawk game.
“This is a huge win for us,” Kelso said. “This league is all over the place and this was a very big win for us.”
“We’ve got Mohawk on Thursday, so this was a great, great win for us,” she added. “This was an important win for us to go to Mohawk at home.”