By Roger Gordon

Correspondent

Jessica Butler lost just one senior to graduation last spring, so the Mogadore head coach was confident heading into this season.

“We had a lot of returning athletes. We knew this was going to be probably a good run of a year,” she said. “I knew that, if the players maintained consistency and looked forward to trying to work every point, every set, every match toward what they’re going to try to achieve at districts … that’s been our whole focus. And the girls have been consistent. I also tried to schedule as many challenging teams as I could. We’re trying to focus on the long game.”

For now, though, the Wildcats will settle for a 14-4 record and a five-match winning streak after they defeated Smithville at home on Sept. 28 by a score of 25-23, 25-17, 17-25, 25-22.

“I thought the first set, even though it was close, we started out a little bit slow, but we tend to start out a little slow,” said Butler. “It just sort of went back and forth, so we really had to fight at the end. We came back pretty strong the second set and really finished that strong. In the third set, I feel like we lost a little focus, and they started revving up a little bit. In the fourth, we changed from a 6-2 to a 5-1 on offense. I think that helped the consistency of the set. It still was a tight set, though.”

Leading the way were senior middle hitter/outside hitter Kaitlyn Clester, sophomore middle hitter/right-side hitter Londyn Umbright and senior Libero Gracie Shull.

“Kaitlyn did a really nice job,” said the coach. “We really needed her to block, and she was able to pull some really good blocks. When we switched to that 5-1 passing in the back row, she did a nice job of playing deep in that middle back position.

“Londyn really stepped up. She did a great job with blocking and also just taking a lot of attacks out of the middle. She did a great job passing, too, and she’s a competitive server. We had some hitters who we usually go to who were just not on their game, and Londyn did a fabulous job making the difference.

“Gracie did a fabulous job. She had a lot of good digs and read the ball really well. She did a nice job of completing plays.”

Mogadore dropped from Division VI to Division VII this season. One would think that will make the Wildcats’ postseason a little easier, but that is not the case, according to Butler.

“It will be a big change for us,” she said. “There are very competitive Division VII teams, and we’ve never competed against those schools in the postseason.”