Bellevue defeats Clyde in Battle of Route 20

BELLEVUE — Get ahead and stay ahead. Bellevue won the first two sets in matches earlier this week against Willard and Edison. Willard came back to topple the Lady Red while Bellevue escaped the Chargers in five sets. Against rival Clyde on Thursday, Bellevue didn't let off the gas pedal, topping the Fliers 25-21, 25-16, 25-16, in Sandusky Bay Conference Lake Division action. "We talked about being confident and not letting up," said Bellevue coach Liana Petitti of the talk after the second set. "We had to stay focused on the goal and not change the things we were doing. I think that's what we struggled with earlier this week. We'd get in that third set and feel the pressure to finish the match. "Obviously we were very successful in the first and second set. We had to reiterate to them to keep doing the things we were doing and to keep anticipating the things they were doing." The Lady Red (5-2, 1-0 SBC Lake) rarely trailed the entire night. They did early in the first set before rattling off six straight points to go up 7-3. Later, consecutive kills by Kaitlyn Turinsky made it 11-7. Clyde (3-5, 0-1) kept fighting and was within 12-10 before a 5-0 run by Bellevue made it 17-10. Back-to-back aces from Emma Krall gave the Lady Red a seven-point advantage. The Fliers crawled within 23-21, but a kill and block from Turinsky gave the Lady Red a 1-0 lead. "We know Bellevue comes times ten when they play Clyde," Clyde coach Shelley Rogers said. "I think our block really needed to be there. We need to be able to hit the ball. We were trying to place it too much instead of hitting the ball. We struggled with setting our block up well." Bellevue raced out to a 5-1 advantage early in Set 2. After a hitting error by the Lady Red and kill from Lillian Greenslade for the Fliers, Bellevue sprinted off the next six points to go up 11-3. Freshman Calie Cramer served up an ace and Turinsky put down a kill to make it 14-5. Again, the Fliers made a run at it, getting within 16-11, but the next six points went to Bellevue. Two kills from Finley LaPata gave the Lady Red a stranglehold on the match. Set 3 was much of the same from Bellevue. This time, it was a slim 12-11 lead when the Lady Red strung the next six points together. Turinsky and Cramer lined kills to keep Bellevue ahead 20-14. Ella Dauch poked a kill over the net to seal the win for Bellevue. The Lady Red finished with 15 aces. "We served for 25 minutes yesterday," Petitti said. "After Monday and Tuesday, we were definitely not satisfied with our aces-to-errors ratio. We talked a lot about that yesterday that in order to win matches, serving, passing and defense are critical. We did a lot of work with pressure serving. We have to be accountable with our errors." Brooklyn Hemminger led the Fliers with five kills while Reese Daniel had four kills. Lucy Glass paced the defense with 21 digs and Kelsey Ray registered 12 assists. Keeli Kramer added nine assists. "I think we have got this large mental mountain that we have yet to climb," Rogers said. "We have great chemistry in practice and great chemistry off the court when we do team stuff. When we get on the court, everybody wants to do so well that it's almost a fear of messing up." LaPata tallied 13 kills for Bellevue while Turinsky had 10 kills. Cramer and Hallie McCarthy added five kills apiece. The quartet each had at least 10 kills in the match against Willard. "It takes the pressure off of just one girl having to carry the load," said Petitti of the balanced hitting. "It allows our setters to be more flexible. We can be super creative in our offense. We have hitters that can hit in all three positions. That makes you very hard to defend because they can't key in on just one girl." Kate Baptista picked up 15 digs while Krall had 10 digs for the Lady Red. Ellie Freitag registered 26 assists. "I think our defense played lights out," Petitti said. "We didn't miss very many balls on defense. I'm super impressed with our girls. They're buying in and they're playing for each other. It showed."