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Celina's Ella Shelby (8) goes for the spike past Kenton's Alexis Ratliff (4) during Thursday's WBL match.
CELINA - Through the majority of the first set, Celina looked a bit sluggish and in need of a spark.
Kambry Yoder provided the jumper cables.
Yoder served up seven straight points to break an 18-all tie to give the Bulldogs the 25-18 win over Kenton, then road the wave to wins of 25-13 and 25-13 in the final two sets to win the Western Buckeye League match over the Wildcats at Celina Intermediate School to move the Bulldogs to 2-3 in the WBL and 3-11 overall.
Kenton (2-10, 0-5 WBL) came out ready to play as Celina struggled with some hitting errors and bad serving. Kenton went up 17-15 before Celina bounced back with ties at 17-all and 18-all when Yoder went back to serve. A kill by Hailey Hinton broke the tie for Celina, then Yoder had an ace before another Hinton point. After Kenton was called for being in the net to make it 22-18 and a timeout, Celina got another service winner when Kenton couldn't send the ball back over in three hits. Yoder added another ace before a Kenton hitting error gave Celina the first set.
Celina's Natalie Carlin goes to one knee to dig the ball during Thursday's WBL match with Kenton.
"I don't know why we do that to ourselves, but it seems to be our MO," said Celina coach Amy Sutter. "Once we settled in and got comfortable, we found the floor a little bit better. We threw in more off speed shots that seemed to work more than the big heavy ones. And then, once they tried to adjust to that, the bigger harder hits worked better too."
After nine ties and five lead changes in the opening set, Celina never trailed again. Celina led 5-2 early when Yoder went back to serve again. This time, the sophomore served up six straight points as Lilly Shreffler had a kill and block and Hinton added another kill to put Celina in front 11-3. Kenton, though, tried to stay resilient, cutting the margin to 15-9 before Celina pulled away again. This time it was Whitney Kennedy serving up six straight points to close out the match and put the Bulldogs in front 2-0.
Celina's Trisha Stein (2) sets the ball for teammate Myah Ly (12).
Trish Stein got the serve to begin the third set for Celina and put together a clinch, serving up two aces along with kills from Ella Shelby, Myah Ly and McKenna Lonsway to make it 8-0 before a spike into the net stopped the run. Celina got another solid service run by Yoder of four points that helped push the margin to 20-5.
Then it appeared the spark faded, as Kenton's Adella Dudek served up six straight points, with an ace, two kills from Rileigh Barnt and several Celina hitting errors that cut the margin to 20-12 and forced Sutter to call a timeout to offer some choice words. The words did their job as Losnway got a kill for the sideout, then Trisha Stein and Breanna Kinnicutt closed out the match, with Kinnicutt serving up an ace to close it out.
"We made a lot of some unforced errors there because I think we just got satisfied. We thought, you know, the game was won before we hit 25," said Sutter. That was nice to see us finish for once instead of collapse. And I think that in itself is a victory that we're growing a little bit."
Lonsway had 10 kills for Celina. Kinnicutt had 16 digs while Yoder finished with five aces. Stein set up the attack with 16 assists.
Celina continues its four-match home stand on Tuesday as Mercer County foe Coldwater comes to town for a match
