Amy Marx said she sent the same message to the Simon Kenton Pioneers volleyball players every hour.
“We are going to do this.”
Marx just wanted the Pioneers to believe they could take down perennial 8th Region power North Oldham in the 8th Region semifinals at Eminence and it happened in a thrilling way. The Pioneers lost the first two games and even trailed 13-8 in the fifth and final game before running off seven in a row to win, 3-2 (21-25, 16-25, 25-15, 25-22, 15-13)
“That’s what we needed. We needed to focus and have that confidence,” Marx said. “I kept saying it to them until they started saying it and then they did it. I said we have to put the ball down. If you don’t, if you’re afraid, we won’t win.”
Simon Kenton (30-7) rallied behind its balanced 6-2 attack using setters Sadie Rehkamp and CeCe Scalf as both hitters and setters throwing a number of looks at North Oldham. Jenna Kitchens led the way with 18 kills, 10 digs, four blocks and two aces.
“Once we lost the first two sets, we decided to play as hard as we could,” Rehkamp said. “We never gave up knowing it would be our last points for our seniors. We had to go down with a fight.”
The Pioneers saw three players and nearly a fourth record double-digit kills. Keira Hans and Alisha Hawkins followed with 12 and 11, respectively, with Sophie Spanier using her left-handed swing to put down nine balls to go with 18 digs and three aces.
Simon Kenton had 53 kills, 120 digs, 48 assists, 10 aces and 10 blocks. Rehkamp recorded 23 assists and Scalf had 18. Tori Chasteen 42 digs with Scalf and Rehkamp digging up 19 and 16 balls, respectively.
“You have to think about what you can do better and fix it,” Spanier said of overcoming mistakes. “You just keep looking ahead. We focus on hitting the ball harder. But I think we should focus more on hitting open spots instead so we get more points.”
North Oldham (25-10) had 36 kills, 30 assists and three aces unofficially trying to employ balance all across the board. Riley Adams led the Mustangs with 20 assists with Hannah Murphy and Vita Sensenbrenner tallying six kills each.
Simon Kenton struggled to get things going in the first game, initially falling behind 18-7. But the Pioneers did double up the Mustangs, 14-7 the rest of the game before losing, finding some things that worked.
North Oldham scored the first four points of the second game and never looked back. The Pioneers called timeouts down 7-3 and 17-11 in that game.
“We changed our lineup in the second set,” Marx said. “I said we have to do those little things better and they did.”
The Pioneers came out stronger in the third game. They had success hitting to the deep corners, opening things up in the middle. Chasteen landed three aces to put Simon Kenton up 14-7 after scoring the first three points of the game. North Oldham did trim it to eight before Hans ended the game with a kill.
Simon Kenton came out strong again the fourth game scoring the first four points. But North Oldham came back tying it at 13. It stayed close for a while before the Pioneers jumped ahead 20-18. Tied at 22, Hawkins had a block before Kitchens landed a kill and Rehkamp finished it with an ace to send it to the fifth game.
Some of the errors that hurt Simon Kenton in the first two sets came back in the fifth game allowing North Oldham to go up 4-1. The Mustangs built the lead to 13-8 prompting a Pioneer timeout. Kitchens put down three straight kills to make it 13-11 Mustangs prompting North Oldham coach Kayla Gamsky to call a timeout.
“The momentum definitely shifted during the course of the game,” Gamsky said. “I was glad to see the girls continue to fight point after point. Simon Kenton worked a little harder, played a little smarter than we did.”
Kitchens then tied it at 13 hitting one off blocks following a Mustangs hitting error. Following a North Oldham wide hit, Kitchens put the ball down on an overpass from a Chasteen serve to end the game.
“It was great. We adjusted well to the sets,” Kitchens said. “That allowed us to run our offense, which was good.”
The win puts the Pioneers in the 8th Region championship game back at Eminence at 7 p.m. against the Oldham County Colonels, whom they’ve beaten twice this year. Oldham County (23-12) bested Simon Kenton, 3-2 in the region championship two years ago at the same location.