Blue Jays take care of business, send Saints packing Tuesday – Jamestown Sun

JAMESTOWN — Pregame speeches work — just ask Sara Hegerle.

“We talked in our pregame about how we haven’t really been taking care of business,” Hegerle, the head coach for the Jamestown High School volleyball team, said. “We’ve been lacking some confidence in some different areas so we just felt like we needed tonight to be a big night.

“They were all just pounding balls tonight,” she said. “All of them — I thought they did a good job. It was so fun.”

The Blue Jays stretched their win streak to three games, defeating St. Mary’s 3-0 on Tuesday night. The win over the Saints pushed the Jays to 15-1 in the WDA while St. Mary’s dropped down to 4-12 in the conference.

Jamestown will have its fifth test in eight days on Wednesday at Bismarck Century. A win against Century would clinch the Jays’ first regular-season sweep of the Patriots since 2017.

If Tuesday’s match was any indication of what Century should expect on Wednesday, the Patriots had better be ready.

In the first set, the Jays sped out to an 18-7 lead which soon turned into a 24-11 advantage. An error on St. Mary’s serve finished off the first 25-11.

St. Mary’s made it a little bit tougher on the Jays in set No. 2 — coming as close as one point at multiple points — but after some refocusing, the Jays took a healthy 23-13 lead. Edie Hegerle capped off the second with a pair of aces. Hegerle finished her night with the most assists (27) and digs (10) and the second-most aces (5).

Those 10-point leads seemed to be the trend of the night.

In the third, Jamestown jumped out to a 13-3 lead and with Makenna Nold serving the Jays managed to rack up three more before a missed serve finally gave the Saints a side out. Nold notched six of the team’s 16 total aces.

“St. Mary’s — they are feisty and they are good — but we didn’t give them a chance,” Hegerle said. “We served so tough tonight.”

wSt. Mary’s scored eight of the next 15 points to put them in the double digits but with three points to go, the Jays kept the pressure on.

Lucy Falk scored the final point of the match. The freshman sent a cross-court cut spinning off a St. Mary’s DS’ arms to clinch the match.

Jamestown’s third-straight victory was a credit to the squad’s response to some adversity Bismarck Legacy threw at them on Oct. 10.

The Sabers downed the Jays 3-2 at home. Legacy is Jamestown’s one conference loss.

“I think Legacy was a really important match for us,” Hegerle said. “If we would have squeaked a win, maybe the lesson would have been learned but we needed to learn how to be intentional the entire match. I think that was a good loss for us. We’ve learned a lot from it.”

After falling to the Sabers, the Jays regrouped and took on Watford City on Oct. 13 and Williston on Oct. 14. Both games were 3-0 sweeps for the Jays but Hegerle said it was on Saturday when the Blue Jays started to put it all together.

“I think it was 24-21 and I wasn’t even worried because our kids were playing so relaxed on Saturday,” Hegerle said. “They hadn’t played like that for a while. They played tight against Legacy, they played tight against Watford but on Saturday they were just smiling more. We talk about it all the time, this is supposed to be fun.

“This was fun,” she said of the match against St. Mary’s. “This is what fun looks like and we’re going to keep going.”

Jamestown 3, St. Mary’s 0

SM 11 13 13

JHS 25 25 25

SM — No stats provided.

JHS — Kills: Makenna Nold 15, Kendyl Anderson 6, Edie Hegerle 5, Kinley Anderson 5, Leah Trumbauer 4, Addison Marker 4, Lucy Falk 1. Assists: Hegerle 27, Trumbauer 1, Makhal Rowell 1, Nold 1. Digs: Hegerle 10, Trumbauer 8, Rowell 6, Sara Sletto 6, Nold 3, Marker 2, Emma Houge 1, Kinley Anderson 1, Kendyl Anderson 1. Aces: Nold 6, Hegerle 5, Kinley Anderson 3, Houge 1, Trumbauer 1.

Katie Ringer is a sports reporter for the Jamestown Sun. Katie joined the Sun staff in the summer of 2019 after graduating from the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire with a degree in journalism. She can be reached by email at kringer@jamestownsun.com or by phone at 701-952-8460.