Nikiski volleyball celebrates senior night by toppling Homer

The Nikiski volleyball team celebrated senior night by defeating Homer 25-21, 25-12, 20-25 and 25-22 on Thursday in Southcentral Conference action at Nikiski Middle-High School.

The Bulldogs improve to 12-5 in nontournament play and 6-1 in the league, while the Mariners fall to 2-9 and 2-6.

Nikiski honored seniors Ashlee Anderson, Wynter Yeager, Zoey Ellis, Maggie Grenier, Avery White and manager Brooke Abel right before the match.

White has not played at all this season due to a knee injury, but she was allowed to do a ceremonial first serve to start the match.

Nikiski fell behind early in the first game, but came alive when freshman Mandee Roofe, who had 12 blocks, started asserting herself at the net.

“You could definitely see that when she got a couple of huge stuff blocks, they were having to move their attack around the block, which then traps them into our defense ultimately,” Nikiski head coach Stacey Segura said.

“I thought that our defense played really well tonight, and that our serve-receive was pretty solid.”

Nikiski’s defense, which also received six blocks from middle Alexa Iyatunguk, 20 digs from Kailey Stynsberg and 17 digs from Evelyn Reichert, smothered Homer in Game 2 in winning 25-12.

The Mariners bounced back in Game 3, though, and Brightly Thoning served out the last five points in a 25-20 win.

“I thought it was amazing,” Homer head coach Ian Overson said. “My girls fought all the way through, and I loved it.

“They had some down points, but in general, you could see by the plays that were going on in the last two sets that they were on fire.”

Segura said her team has a great ability to reset after a set. In Game 4, the score was tied at 13 when Abby White served out eight straight points for a 21-13 lead. Homer had hitting errors on five of the points.

“Small little errors that happen, but the thing I like about it is even though they make errors they fight back through it like a champ,” Overson said.

Thoning served out four straight puts to cut the gap to 23-22.

Iyatunguk, who had made some hitting errors by going wide left, hit some balls to the right and got two straight kills to end the match. She ended with six kills.

“She’s so consistent,” Segura said of Iyatunguk. “And she’s so smart that I’m rarely worried that she’s not going to do well.”

Also for Nikiski, Avery Ellis had 16 assists, Zoey Ellis had nine kills and Evelyn Reichert had eight kills.

“I thought where we struggled tonight was our communication,” Segura said. “On our communication, I’m really trying to force that into the girls and help them understand that, that can be the difference with a lot of unforced errors.

“And that will clean up a lot of mistakes right before regions.”

Overson said setter Rebecca Trowbridge had a great game, while the block also was good, led by Alexandra Casey.

Segura said it will be tough to watch the seniors leave.

“Their sophomore year was a rough year and they really turned it around last year and created this really positive, happy atmosphere,” she said.