The Hillsboro Lady Indians volleyball team hosted the McClain Lady Tigers on Tuesday at Hillsboro High School in Frontier Athletic Conference play and won against the visitors from Greenfield 3-1 in four sets.
“It’s been awhile since we beat McClain, so it’s huge…”, Hillsboro coach Nikki Dickey said. “The fans were really in the game tonight and that definitely helps.”
Hillsboro and McClain each played well in the first set and were tied at 20-20 when Iva Easter stepped behind the service line and lead the Lady Tigers to five consecutive points. The Lady Indians tried to stem the tide of McClain momentum with timeouts at 22-20 and 24-20 to no avail as the Lady Tigers secured the first set win 25-20.
In the second set the Lady Indians were able to find a groove against the Lady Tigers, especially in the service return game where they held McClain to one service attempt seven times in the set. Hillsboro took the second set by a score of 25-19 and tied the match at one set apiece.
The third set was a much more back and forth affair and the Lady Tigers held a 23-22 lead late in the set before the Lady Indians were able to break serve following a timeout by Dickey, and score tied at 23-23. From there Freshman Jolee Cummings recorded two consecutive service points to secure the Hillsboro set victory at 25-22.
Hillsboro was firing on all cylinders in the fourth and final set against McClain and led 21-13 in the set before the Lady Tigers rallied late. However, the Lady Indians were able to weather the storm and secure the set win 25-20. Hillsboro took the match 3-1 over the visiting McClain ladies.
“We are very happy. They won on Saturday, to come off of Saturday and to win here tonight over McClain,” said Dickey. “Extremely excited. The girls are working well together.”
Boys soccer
The McClain boy soccer team traveled to Hillsboro on Tuesday to take on the Indians in an FAC and cross-county rivalry matchup that saw the boys from McClain win 2-0.
Braeden Bergstrom was able to find the back of the net for both of the Tigers’ goals in the game. Bergstrom broke a nearly 35-minute shutout with 11:51 to play in the first half to put McClain up 1-0.
The score stayed 1-0 for the remainder of the first half despite repeated attacks on the Hillsboro end of the field by the McClain boys.
“We didn’t play like the Tiger soccer team that beat Chillicothe here tonight,” said McClain coach Nick McNeil. “We’ve had a bad habit here lately. We have been playing down instead of up like we should. I think the kids came in, they looked at Hillsboro’s record and I tried to tell them, ‘Hillsboro’s record does not say how good they are. Hillsboro plays a really strong schedule.’ That rang true tonight, Hillsboro played really great, and they possessed the ball great. They did a great job.”
Bergstrom netted his second goal of the contest on a penalty kick after a hard foul in the box in the second half.
“We started out very aggressive, we won balls out of the air, we passed well, and we played balls good wide,” said Hillsboro coach Adam Schelling. “We had some good shots in the first half and then they converted their first goal and that kind of put us back a little bit… The second half that penalty kick came and that kind of knocked us down a little bit. We had two goals to come back from with maybe 20 minutes left and that’s a good Greenfield team that’s a tall order to do against them.”
The win gives the Tigers a 7-1-1 record on the season with the loss and tie both coming at the hands of a powerhouse Alexander team.
“We replaced Washington Court House with them on the schedule,” said McNeil. “That Alexander game made a big change for us. We had to make a big change and that made us a better team.”
Girls soccer
The Hillsboro girls soccer team hosted the McClain Lady Tigers in an FAC matchup Tuesday. Hillsboro took the game by a score of 10-0 over the visitors from Greenfield.
The win brings the Lady Indians overall record on the season to 4-4 overall and 3-2 in FAC play.
Alexia Sheppard led the Lady Indians with four goals in the game. Sheppard recorded one goal in the first half and exploded for a second-half hat trick.
Laila Zugg had two goals while Brooke Ulicny, Samantha Blair and Hannah Brandyberry recorded one goal each to account for the Lady Indians’ other goals in the game.
“We had a good game, we played well as a team, and we scored a lot of goals,” said Hillsboro coach Amanda Miller. “We have a lot of preparing to do for our game later this week. So we moved people around, kind of tried some things out.
“Overall we are having a great season. We are playing as a team. I see a lot of positives coming out of this season. We are hoping starting over on our league games we have some different outcomes the next time we play a couple of teams. Hopefully we end the year with a winning record.”
Ryan Applegate is a stringer for The Times-Gazette.
