Volleyball: Rock Falls rolls to home invitational crown

ROCK FALLS – As early-season volleyball tournaments give teams a rapid-fire lesson on fixing issues, the Rock Falls Rockets made the most out of their corrections Saturday at their home invitational at Tabor Gymnasium.

The Rockets ran the table in pool play, defeated Bureau Valley in a semifinal and bested Newman 25-21, 25-12 in the championship match.

Rock Falls (8-1) went 5-0 on the day, having won all but one set out of 11 — a 20-14 first-set loss to Riverdale in its second match in pool play. After that initial setback, the Rockets never trailed mid-set during its final three matches.

“We did a lot of real nice things today,” Rockets coach Sheila Pillars said. “Our passing was real good today. My defense was real good today. We just have to work on being consistent set-to-set. We get some mental issues and then we come back again. We can figure out those issues and keep working on them; that’s why I like this tournament early because we’re getting ahead of the game and trying to work out those kinks.”

Newman (8-2) also came into the championship having won all but one set — a first-set defeat to Bureau Valley in its third pool play match. Both the Comets and Rockets had little trouble dispatching their semifinal opponents before reaching the title match — one that saw the Comets start off firing more misses than they wanted early in the first set.

The Rockets were spotted a 7-1 lead after five Comet hitting miscues to start the match, and the lead reached double-digits at 13-3 after back-to-back left pin kills from Claire Bickett.

Newman clawed back to get to within three at 18-15 after a cross-kill by Molly Olson from the right pin, and were down six at 23-17 before the Comets made a late charge. Ellie Rude blocked a Bickett spike to make it 23-18, and back-to-back Rocket hitting errors brought the gap back to three at 23-20 before a Rocket timeout.

After Bickett was called for a lift violation to narrow the gap to 23-21, she put down her seventh kill of the set for No. 24, and another Comets’ hitting error brought the first set to a close.

“We collectively got better throughout the day,” Bickett said. “We made a lot of mistakes earlier in the day and pulled away in the rest of the games, and when it came to the championship, we just really focused in and got the job done when we needed to.”

Back-to-back kills from Nicolette Udell and Emily Lego put the Rockets up 2-0 in the second set, and the early lead grew once more to 7-1. This time around, the Comets had a more immediate answer and went on a 6-2 run — highlighted by a pair of kills from Jess Johns and a block from Kennedy Rowzee — to make it 9-7 Rockets.

“Those two stretches at the start, we dug too big of a hole to get out of it,” Johns said. “We started picking it up toward the end and started playing a lot better, but when we got to that point, it was just too late.”

From there, the Rockets fired well while the Comets fired misses for the next 13 points to put the match out of reach.

The Comets had a run where they had six hitting errors in a seven-serve stretch — the other Rocket point coming on a Udell kill — to give Rock Falls a 16-7 lead. Bickett then reeled off back-to-back aces before another Udell kill pushed the lead to 19-7. The big string ended after Bickett’s third ace of her service run that made it 22-7.

Bickett and Udell both ended with seven kills for the Rockets, and Lego added three more kills. Johns led the Comets with eight kills. The next time the two teams could meet again would be Oct. 15 during the Eastland Invitational.

For the tournament, Lego led the way with 31 kills, Bickett and Udell each spiked 29 kills, and Bickett added 24 digs and six aces. Denali Stonitsch dished 78 assists and served seven aces, Carli Kobbeman had 37 digs and five aces, Sophia Moeller added 15 digs, and Cadence Williamson spiked eight kills.

“We got out to a slow start in the first game, but I’m proud of the girls for working, keeping their heads up, and kept coming back and made it a good game for that first game,” Newman coach Debbi Kelly said. “That second game, it got a little rough at the end, but the girls have got to work through the adversity, and it’s something we’ll work on. It’s a young team, and it’s still early in the season, and those are the things we’re going to learn and take away from an overall great tournament for us.”

Johns had 43 kills, 35 digs, six blocks and four aces for the day, with Rowzee adding 31 kills and 11 blocks. Katie Grennan finished with 44 assists, 19 digs, 10 aces and 5.5 blocks, and Molly Olson had 33 assists, 23 digs and nine kills. Sophia Ely had 10 kills, eight digs, two blocks and two aces, Addison Foster had 21 digs and 12 assists, Sam Ackman chipped in 21 digs, and Ellie Rude added five kills, 5.5 blocks and four aces.

Rock Falls beat Morrison in straight sets, Riverdale in three and Princeton in two to go unbeaten in its pool before downing Bureau Valley 25-14, 25-9 in a semifinal. Newman won its pool with straight set wins over Dixon and Amboy before beating Bureau Valley in three with the last set against the Storm ending with a two-point win.

The Storm captured third place with a 25-27, 25-20, 19-17 win over Riverdale, finishing the tournament at 3-2 after entering it 1-5. Dixon finished the tournament at 2-2, having beaten Princeton to place fifth.