Highland High School volleyball sweeps Collinsville to win season opener at home

Game one of the 2022 volleyball season is in the books for the Highland Lady Bulldogs.

And, when the dust settled, the outcome was a rousing success for HHS.

Highland came out focused from the outset and methodically took down Collinsville in two games — 25-18, 25-18 — Thursday, Aug. 25, at Highland High School.

It was the perfect way for coach Natalies Ott’s Lady Bulldogs to start the 2022 campaign.

“It’s always nice to have game one done. There was a little bit of nerves and anxiety and I’m incredibly happy to be done with game one,” Ott said. “I’m happy with how they came out and I think they handled the nerves and the mental part of it beautifully. We’ve been working on that and talking about that for a long time.”

In game one, Highland battled evenly with Collinsville as the clubs traded serves and points up to 16. Overall, HHS struggled early to get a groove going on offense.

“We made a couple of hitting errors and it’s because I think we were trying to be to controlled, trying to be aggressive but not trying to make the error. That always translates to the error, so we talked about trusting our training and what we’ve done in practice and that always translates (to the game),” Ott said.

HHS then surged ahead 20-16 behind the serving of junior setter Maddie Hime.

Holding a 22-18 advantage, the Lady Bulldogs closed out the first game behind three serves from Russo. Her final serve bounced off the far side of the net and dropped inside the right sideline for the victory.

Highland jumped out to an 11-5 lead to start game two as the serving from Alex Schultz and Larissa Taylor led to an early 6-1 run. The bulge grew to 17-11 on a Taylor kill and a pair of Kalysta Hyre scoring serves.

Ott lauded the efforts of Alex Schultz and Abby Schultz along with the contributions from Taylor and Himes.

“It’s huge (to have them contribute),” Ott said. “So, we are young and we have two seniors so, again, I was kind of nervous to see how we would handle it (the pressure). But to see them step up like this was fantastic.”

Up 21-15, Highland pushed its lead to 24-15 on two aces and a scoring serve from Taylor. The Lady Bulldogs then clinched the match on Taylor’s fourth serve of the run.

“I thought, too, that we kept the offense mixed up well and Maddie did a great job in going to the hot hitters and changing it up to keep them (Collinsville) on their toes,” Ott said.

HHS coach excited about 2022 squad

All in all, Ott is very pleased with the makeup of this year’s club and said this group will be tenacious and hard working match after match.

“Their work ethic is relentless. People have asked me ‘how are you gonna be (this year)?’ And I tell them this group works harder than I have ever seen,” Ott said. “They are just relentless in practice and that translates onto the court and when we get on the court I truly believe this group can do it day in and day out.”

This story was originally published August 25, 2022 at 11:43 PM.