Hazelwood West Loses Season Opener Against Francis Howell Central

The girls volleyball team laid a proverbial egg in its 2011 season opener Monday evening against Francis Howell Central High School.

The West High Wildcats, two-time defending Suburban North Conference champions, had a huge crowd show up for their first match of the season. Unfortunately, not even all the fan support could prevent a two-sets-to-none loss against the Spartans.

“The thing we’ve been working on the last couple of weeks is mental focus,” said West's coach Mike Vaughn. “And we didn’t do a good job tonight. Thing is, we didn’t get down and didn’t get discouraged, it was just a couple points here or there.”

For West, those points of shaky play seemed to come in succession, and allowed Howell Central to turn an even match in the early going into a lopsided win for the visitors, by scores of 25-14, and 25-12.

“You have to give them credit,” Vaughn said. “They took advantage of our mistakes. I don’t even know if you could say they played that great. But they took advantage of what we (didn’t do right).”

The Wildcats actually led in the early stages of the first set, as senior middle hitter Sara Gregor dominated the first few points of the match, with three kills and two blocks that help West grab a 6-4 lead.

But that 2-point edge was the last one the Wildcats would have, as Howell Central won the next four points to take an 8-6 lead, then a little while later, won seven of eight straight points for to push its lead to 18-11.

The Spartans closed the first set with five straight points for a 25-14 win.

“I think people are a little timid right now trying to figure out who’s who and who should be where,” Vaughn said. “At the same time, this was a pretty good showing for our first game. Francis Howell Central is really good, and our girls battled them all the way through.”

The second set was all Howell Central, who won six of the first eight points for a 6-2 lead, and never looked back.

“We got on a roll a little bit, but we can play much better than that,” said Howell Central coach Mark McAfee. “We were kind of sloppy out there. I thought we made a lot of mistakes.”

Howell Central’s Mallory Dillon led all players with seven kills overall on Monday, while teammates Kayla Allsman and Mary Emery added 10 assists and eight assists, respectively, for the Spartans.

Howell Central has two more road games scheduled before hosting its own home opener at 6 p.m. Sept. 8 against St. Charles West.

Hazelwood West will be back in action at home at 5:30 p.m. Friday when the Wildcats host Parkway Central.