PLEASANTVILLE, IOWA — The Woodward-Granger volleyball team climbed out of the just about the deepest hole a team can fall into and still emerge with a victory by rallying for an improbable 3-2 win over Pleasantville Thursday.
W-G, now 7-12 overall but 7-1 in WCAC play, dropped the first two games of the match on scores of 25-22 and 28-26. At that point the Hawks turned the tables, winning game three, 25-16, and game four 25-10.
With a conference win on the line, the teams moved into a deciding fifth set, with the guests slipping away, 16-14, to steal the win, dropping the Trojans to 14-12, 3-5.
The Hawks served 100-of-113, an accuracy clip of 89 percent. While the rate was acceptable, what mattered more was the 24 total aces W-G servers were able to record.
Darby Nixon finished 24-of-25 with six aces, with Audrey Simmons 16-23-6 and Samantha Volz 18-18-4. Jada Tague was 18-19-2, Brayten Ashman 14-16-2, Ashley Gerken 5-5-2 and Grace Deputy 5-7-2.
Deputy led the offense with seven kills, with Simmons having six. Ashman and Tague had five kills apiece, Lindsay Mescher four, Volz three and Gerken two.
W-G assists were scattered across the lineup, with Simmons providing 11 and Nixon and Volz seven each. Ashman tallied three assists, with Tague and Gerken each making one.
Nixon came away with 28 digs, with Volz and Ashman having 11 apiece and Tague 10. Simmons made four digs, Deputy three, Mescher two and Gerken one.
W-G will finish their regular season at home with a trio of events in Woodward. Panorama will visit Tuesday and Van Meter Thursday, with the annual Norm McCune Invitational set for Oct. 16.
