Tipp rolls past Greenville in busy week

As we have reached the halfway point in the regular season, the Tippecanoe volleyball team continues to show why they are focused on a lot of big goals this season. 

Their first goal is to repeat in the Miami Valley League, and they dominated Greenville in a league match last week 25-5, 25-7, 25-15 to remain unbeaten on the season at 11-0.

They also continue their perfect set streak this season, winning their 33rd consecutive set without a loss. After a bit of a slow start in the first set with Tipp leading 5-4, they ran off a 20-1 run to kick things into gear and never looked back.

“That is the way we have been playing the entire season. Disregard that we have been winning those sets, but we start a bit to get a feel like in boxing,” Tipp coach Howard Garcia said. “Then the team goes and imposes their will. Everything went according to the game plan. Greenville did everything we thought they were going to do and we ended up coming up with that win.”

With the Red Devils leading 5-4 early in set one, good net play from Savannah Clawson and Lexi Luginbuhl helped Tipp push their lead to 10-5, then Clawson served 15 consecutive points to send Tipp to the easy win. Abbi Mader had a run of kills during that stretch and Luginbuhl added two more to give Tipp complete dominance at the net.

Set two saw a faster start for the Red Devils as they used five points, including four aces from Courtney Post, to build the early Tipp lead to 8-1. Greenville battled back behind a pair of kills from Kyndall Burke to make it 9-5. Again, that is when the Red Devils took over the set.

Clawson served four more points for Tipp, as did Bri Morris to give Tipp a 19-7 lead and the easy road to victory. Mader closed out the game with four points.

Game three was a bit closer for a while. Tipp held onto a 12-11 lead as Kindyl Peltz kept the Green Wave around. The Red Devils strung off eight straight, including a run of points from Emersyn Sivon, and Tipp never looked back. Greenville did make it a seven point game, but three points to close them out sent Tipp to their 11th straight win.

“The kids play to the level that they have to play,” Garcia said when asked how tough it is to get the players up for some league matches. “We know what we have, and we have that motto, we don’t care who is on the other side, it’s us playing against ourselves.”

*Tipp also defeated Troy last week 25-2, 25-12, 25-21, and Xenia 25-8, 25-8, 25-15. On Saturday, the Red Devils defeated the only team to hand Tipp a loss last regular season, and did it in a sweep over Versailles 25-20, 27-25, 25-23. You can read more about this match next week.