Columbus North’s Yuta Kondo makes a dig against Greenwood Christian Academy Wednesday in the Franklin Sectional.
Nick Wilson | For The Republic
FRANKLIN — Columbus North didn’t play a perfect match Wednesday night, but it was good enough when it needed to be.
The Bull Dogs came up big time and time again in the clutch moments, taking command at the end of three different tight sets to steal a 27-25, 16-25, 25-21, 25-23 victory over Greenwood Christian Academy in the opening round of the boys volleyball Franklin Sectional.
North (11-18), which got 16 kills from sophomore Yuta Kondo and 14 from junior Leo Iorio, will face Shelbyville in a semifinal match on Saturday morning.
“We were pretty inconsistent,” Bull Dogs coach Jeff Case said. “We’d make some good plays and make some bad plays, and got lucky enough to make a couple of good ones at the end.”
With the exception of the second, which was largely controlled by the Cougars, every set came down to the bitter end.
Both teams started out the evening by feeding their top hitters, with Iorio notching a pair of kills for North and senior Hayden Johnson accounting for four of GCA’s first seven points. The Bull Dogs trimmed a 14-9 deficit to 14-13 thanks to back-to-back service aces from Kondo and a block from Iorio, but a Johnson kill ended the rally and the Cougars maxed out their lead at 20-15 on a kill by Braxton Bell.
North didn’t quit, though, putting together a 7-1 run that was punctuated by a Kondo kill that put his team up 22-21. The two sides then passed the upper hand back and forth, with each fighting off a set point, before the Bull Dogs were able to score the last three points of the set on Kondo’s third ace and a pair of GCA errors.
The second set began equally back-and-forth, with four early ties and a pair of lead changes, before the Cougars took control midway through. A Luke McNichols ace and a Johnson kill capped a four-point run that put GCA on top to stay at 13-10, and that advantage swelled to 21-13 thanks to a surge that included an ace from junior Brenden Partlow, two kills from Johnson and another from Bell.
North took its first lead of the third set on a service ace from senior Parth Shah and then capped off the longest rally of the match on a tip by senior Kota Kondo to go up 10-8. A rash of errors — five in a six-point span — tilted the scoreboard the other way and the Cougars led 16-13 after a pair of Johnson kills. But the Bull Dogs answered with five consecutive points, including a pair of kills by Iorio and one from senior Juan Jose Salcedo Calderon, to regain the upper hand at 18-16.
Salcedo Calderon hammered home two more kills to start up a 7-1 North run that grew the margin to 24-18. GCA fended off three set points before an error snuffed out its comeback hopes in the third.
Neither side could maintain momentum for long in the fourth set, which featured 10 ties and eight lead changes before the Bull Dogs surged in front 21-18 on a Yuta Kondo kill and an ace by Iorio. Feeling the urgency, GCA evened it back up on a kill from Johnson and two in a row from Bell, but Yuta Kondo went crosscourt for his 14th kill of the evening to put North up 23-22, added another to force match point and then a third to end it.
Case said the Bull Dogs were seeking out Yuta Kondo by design on those closing points.
“That last timeout, that’s what we wanted to do,” Case said. “High outside, run middle in and try to freeze their middle and get a good matchup on the outside. We thought it was a good matchup for us.”
Kota Kondo recorded 30 assists, Noah Dornfeld had five blocks, Iorio and Hank Lin each notched 18 digs and Yuta Kondo served four aces for North. Salcedo Calderon tallied five kills and four blocks, Ramu Alagappin served eight assists, Anyu Gong had two blocks, Kota Kondo notched 16 digs, Yoki Murabayashi added 13 digs and Iorio and Shah each served two aces.
GCA (12-13), which had to play one of its top hitters (Partlow) out of position at setter with junior starter Andrew Ramlian sidelined by an injured ankle, got a match-high 22 kills from Johnson and nine from Bell but looked out of sync just a little too often to survive.
“Brenden did pretty good, but then we also lost him as an outside hitter,” GCA coach Gary Oertel said.
North, meanwhile, moves on to face a Shelbyville team it beat twice in three days during the regular season — once in four sets and the other in a tournament two-setter.
“We were lucky enough to get them both times, but they were good matches,” Case said. “It kind of makes me a little nervous playing a team a third time, so we need to really make sure we’re ready to play.”
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
