BIG HIT — Big Red’s Sarah Allen lines up a kill attempt past Catholic Central’s Anna Arai and Lilly Balzano during Thursday’s match inside the Crimson Center. – Andrew Grimm
STEUBENVILLE — Every team wants to give its seniors a memorable senior night.
They don’t get much more memorable than the performance the Big Red volleyball team turned in Thursday on the night it honored its three seniors.
After dropping a sweep at city rival Catholic Central earlier in the season, Big Red returned the favor with an impressive sweep of its own inside the Crimson Center to earn a split in the annual series and send its seniors out as winners in their last city game.
“The seniors have worked hard all year,” Big Red head coach Logan Colabella said. “They’re a great group of girls. For them to come out and do this is just a testament to how hard they work.
“This is always a big game. Especially for us to do this after what happened the last time we played up there shows the girls’ resilience and ability to bounce back. They knew what they needed to do, they practiced hard all week to do it and came out and did it.”
Big Red (7-9) took the match by scores of 25-18, 25-22, 25-21. It trailed 16-13 in the third set and Colabella used a timeout. Her team then scored 11 of the next 12 points to pull away and put it away.
Big Red’s three 12th graders, who were honored before the match, are Sarah Allen, Julia Arlesic and Te’Jah Montgomery.
“They’ve been great leaders and teammates,” Colebella said of the senior trio. “They bring everyone together. I can truly say each of the underclassmen look up to them … they’re just a great group of girls. They make everyone feel like we’re a part of one team, one family.”
The seniors each contributed in the win as Allen tallied an ace, two assists, six digs and 10 kills, Arlesic contributed two aces and four digs and Montgomery recorded an ace, eight digs and nine kills.
Also for Big Red, Sena Smith recorded six aces, an assist and eight digs, Kaitlyn Smith tallied 13 assists and four kills, Analesa Purdue had nine kills, a block and an ace and Emma Lyons finished with nine kills.
For the Crusaders (11-6), Anna Arai tallied six kills, five blocks, five digs and 10 points, Ava Marcino recorded seven kills, 10 assists, eight digs, two blocks, an ace and eight points, Lily Balzano finished with five kills, 13 assists, three digs, two aces and 13 points, Natalie Cherepko tallied two kills, 10 digs and 15 points and Talia Marcino finished with three kills, 12 digs and seven points.
“It was their night, they played really well,” Catholic Central head coach Sherrie Barber said of Big Red. “Getting swept is disappointing. I thought we played well at the net, we had 12 blocks, we just couldn’t put the rest of our game together (Thursday) for some reason.”
UP NEXT
Catholic Central: Has a big match Monday on the road at Harrison Central ahead of the OVAC cutoff next week.
Big Red: Travels to Beaver Local on Tuesday.
