Cardinal volleyball downs Thunder at home triangular

Behind a double-double from Kadance Ahn and the best match of Macy Lampe’s young career so far, Newton’s volleyball team again won the deciding third set in the opener of a home triangular on Thursday.

The Cardinals downed Grand View Christian 25-19, 26-28, 15-12 to open the evening. Newton lost to Class 4A No. 10 North Polk 25-19, 25-16 in its other match.

“To say I am proud of how this team played tonight is an understatement,” Newton volleyball coach Heidi Woollums said. “I think we all agreed we didn’t like how we felt after the Grinnell match. We came in and set some team and individual goals during practice on Wednesday and they came out with some fight in them tonight.”

Against the Thunder (1-6), Newton rallied from an early deficit in set one to win the opener.

Back-to-back aces by Hailey Sumpter tied the opening set against Grand View Christian at 7-all. The game was even five more times before the Cardinals (5-4) pulled away late.

Sumpter’s consecutive aces later in the set put Newton up 20-16, forcing a Grand View Christian timeout. The Cardinals eventually pushed the margin to 23-16 before closing out the frame five points later.

Newton fell behind again in the second set. This time, the Thunder turned a 4-all tie into a 13-8 lead. But two kills by Ahn and an ace by Audrey Rausch closed the gap.

Ahn remained the go-to target for the Cardinals and three more kills kept the set close. Her third kill made it 19-17 and points by Emily Wermager and Lampe tied the frame at 19-all.

It was back-and-forth from that point on with ties coming at 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 and 26. Ahn forced ties three different times with kills. She erased two Thunder set points, too.

Grand View Christian eventually won the set on a net violation and an ace.

The Thunder kept their momentum in the final set, jumping out to a 5-1 lead. Ahn once again led the comeback with three kills during a stretch that saw Newton use a 6-2 run to even the score.

A kill by Aurora Nehring later put the Cardinals up two and a pair of hard serves by Ahn got the Thunder out of system and allowed the Cardinals to go up 12-8.

The Thunder rallied to tie the score, but Newton scored three in a row after a timeout to win. The mini-run featured a kill by Nehring and a hard serve by Lampe that again put the Thunder on their heels. Chloe Rorabaugh finished out the win with her second kill of the match.

“Once again we took a three-set match and that’s not easy to do,” Woollums said. “But they focused in and got the job done.”

Ahn’s double-double included 17 kills and 10 digs along with two aces. Lampe finished with 23 assists, three kills and eight digs.

Sumpter added four digs and five aces, Nehring tallied five kills and three digs and Chloe Swank collected eight digs.

Wermager finished with five digs and Rausch had three digs and two aces.

The Cardinals missed 13 serves but had 10 aces. Sumpter was 15-of-15 in serves and Ahn was 12-of-13.

Against North Polk (5-3), Ahn finished with nine kills and nine digs, Lampe had 14 assists and two digs, Swank tallied eight digs and Nehring and Rorabaugh had two digs and two kills apiece.

Wermager finished with four digs and two aces and Rausch added three digs.

The Cardinals were 30-of-33 in serves with Sumpter serving 7-of-7 and Wermager going 8-of-9. Lampe was 6-of-6.

“North Polk is a good team,” Woollums said. “They run a quick offense and move the ball around well. I was proud of the fight we put up. We had a few unforced errors at the end of game one that were critical but overall I saw positives in our blocking, net play and in our ability to dig some pretty great attacks.”