Boys Volleyball: Ezequiel Rivera, Wolves roll past Oswego

At Oswego East’s recent boys volleyball practices there has been an emphasis on eliminating runs.

Such training may not have resulted in perfection during Thursday’s Southwest Prairie Conference match against crosstown rival Oswego, but the Wolves were awfully good in dominating the Panthers, 25-14, 25-18.

“We’ve really worked a lot on that this week,” Wolves coach Brian Zerfas said. “We’re not going to give up many rallies so we eliminated their runs and took hold of the match. We really did a good job of that. I was proud of their drive, their grit and their ability to finish strong."

There appeared to be a turning point in both games and it seemingly occurred at around the same time and went in Oswego East’s favor.

The Wolves (11-5, 5-1) only had an 11-10 lead in Game 1 but outscored the Panthers, 14-4 to finish them off. In Game 2, once again the Wolves led 11-10. The Panthers used their biggest run of the night to pull within 15-14 but couldn’t get any closer as the Wolves outscored them 10-4 the rest of the way.

“We’ve struggled recently in starting so we’ve tried putting an emphasis on having that aggression right off the bat,” Wolves senior middle hitter Ezequiel Rivera said. “We didn’t do it again but if we made a mistake or they made a mistake we made sure to move onto the next ball no matter what. I thought we did a good job of keeping control on our side and letting them bring the ball over and doing what we do best.”

Rivera had a huge night, tying senior teammate Jahari Winkfield with a team-best seven kills. Rivera also had three block kills. Cade Harrison and Scott Clarke paced the winners with six digs apiece and Sam Behnkecollected 12 assists.

“Today our serving was consistent and strong and it kept them out of their system,” Rivera said. “We were able to single players out that couldn’t get the ball because of weaker passes while we kept playing aggressively and consistently throughout the game.”

There were a handful of occasions where the teams locked inon long volleys and the Wolves seemingly won all of them, including one late in the second game when things were tight.

“We run drills for those in practice all of the time and the team can feed off those big rallies,” Wolves senior outside hitter Cade Harrison said. “It really fuels up our energy and it shows. It wasn’t the loudest game that we’ve played in, but we feel like we can never go down whenever we have a big rally because everyone is excited and playing together.”

Oswego (6-13, 1-5) was led by junior Ben Williams who had four kills. Al Dunah had three aces and junior Ryne Anders collected five digs.

Lastly, Winkfield announced that he will be playing at the next level at Division II Daemen College in New York. The school just added men’svolleyball so he’ll be a part of inaugural season later this fall.

“He’ll be part of the first class which is really cool for him,” Zerfas said.