Perrysburg’s Katie Pahl rises for an attack in Saturday’s Block & Gold Invitational. (Nicholas Huenefeld | Sentinel-Tribune)
By Nicholas Huenefeld
Special to the Sentinel-Tribune
PERRYSBURG — Katie Pahl’s offensive explosion helped guide the Perrysburg volleyball team to a split in the latest version of the annual Block & Gold Invitational at Perrysburg High School on Saturday.
The Yellow Jackets concluded the day with a dominant 25-10, 25-17 win over Liberty-Benton (12-4), which featured 16 kills from Pahl as the junior lefty evenly peppered eight terminations over each set.
“We really moved our offense around and got our middles involved, Pahl said. “We also set Mack (Hurley) on the right side, and that always works. We really spread it out, which helped prevent their blockers from knowing where we were setting it.”
Perrysburg also put a lot of pressure on Liberty-Benton from the service line, highlighted by seven aces from Sophie Burkey. On top of that, Brooklyn Okoneski added three aces as the Yellow Jackets scored 38 of their 50 points from either the service line or on terminations.
“We always come in with a focus that we want to serve aggressively and take them out of their game a little bit, get them out of system,” Pahl said. “I think we did that well. They didn’t really have a lot of perfect sets where they could slam the ball, which was nice.”
Liberty-Benton, which took down Newark Catholic in three sets just before facing Perrysburg, saw the Yellow Jackets score four of the first five points in the opening set.
The Eagles responded, eventually getting a kill and an ace on consecutive points to pull within 10-7.
Perrysburg, however, went on a 10-0 run that featured two kills apiece from Pahl, Hurley and Reese Kaminski, as well as three aces from Burkey.
Pahl added three more terminations down the stretch to close out the set.
“I feel like, especially against Liberty-Benton, we really executed what (the staff) was looking for based on their team and what they were doing and where they were hitting. I feel like we really stepped up in that last match to get the win.”
Both teams slugged it out over the first 24 points in the second set, registering 10 ties and five lead changes, which led to a 12-all tie.
Following that, Burkey had three more aces during a 6-0 run that gave Perrysburg control.
Pahl’s sixth kill of the set, followed by Okoneski’s third ace helped the Yellow Jackets reach 20 points. Pahl and Burkey added two more kills apiece down the stretch.
Earlier in the day, Perrysburg fell 25-19, 25-19 to a strong Avon team that improved to 16-1 on the season. In fact, the No. 3 ranked team in the state at the Division II level has won eight in a row after winning all three of their matches on Saturday.
“We played great teams at this tournament,” Davidson said. “We knew coming in that Avon was a top team in the state. They had some really nice hitters. I felt like we hung with them for a little while, and then we kind of just lost control of passing and couldn’t take care of first-ball on our side.
“That kind of slipped away from us. We didn’t control our side, but we came back against Liberty Benton. They did what we asked them to do to kind of flip that switch.”
Along with NLL wins over Northview and Napoleon, Perrysburg (13-3) wrapped up a 3-1 week.
“This was a big week,” Davidson said. “Northview was kind of a battle, too. They showed up to play. It’s that end of the season, midseason pump where we have to keep pushing through to get to the tournament and finish strong in the NLL. We’re going to keep working in practice this week and hopefully get some more wins.”
