O’FALLON, Mo. — St. Dominic senior Brytn Lyon was chomping at the bit on Monday night.
Lyon, the Crusaders’ setter, sat for the last week while dealing with patellar tendinitis in her knee. She finally got the green light to return as St. Dominic hosted Marquette in a nonconference girls volleyball showdown.
“I was really excited,” Lyon said. “It really sucked to be out for a whole week. I mean, it's my senior year, and any game that I miss is pretty hard, but coming back tonight was really fun.”
Lyon ran the offense to perfection as St. Dominic swept Marquette 25-20, 25-18, 25-19.
Keeley Skiljan and Maddy Mannebach each put down 10 kills and Emma Keele added eight more for St. Dominic (24-6 overall), No. 2 in the large school rankings. Lyon finished with 27 assists.
“That's what we're used to,” St. Dominic coach Courtney Bland said of Lyon. “So, I mean, she came back and was just her old self, and we just fell into the way we normally are. So, it was nice to see.”
Lyon said the injury has been nagging her off and on for a couple of years. She said she’s ready to go for the stretch run.
“The adrenaline helps and the Advil helps,” Lyon said with a smile.
Mallory Sell and Teagan Pocius each had six kills for No. 6 Marquette (18-12), which was playing without several key players due to illness or injury. Maggie Smith had 19 assists.
St. Dominic took control with a 5-0 burst midway through the third set. Keele had a couple of spikes and Mannebach had a block and a kill to help give the Crusaders a 17-10 lead.
“She gives me more confidence, like, even if I make a mistake, then I know she's still going to set me again,” Mannebach said of Lyon. “And I feel like she runs our offense the type of way that I'm used to.”
Cami Kohmetscher put down back-to-back aces to make it 21-13 and a Mannebach kill ended the 68-minute match.
“I noticed that their normal middle wasn't in, so I decided just keep holding that non-normal middle, so I could get my hitters splits and one on ones, and just kind of mixing it up a ton,” Lyon said. “And then I also saw that they were late on their block, so I was like put it a little bit tighter so they can swing line.”
Crusaders take the first two
Marquette jumped out to a 14-10 lead in the first set, before St. Dominic took control with a 10-2 run powered by a couple of big swings from Skiljan, who finished the frame with four kills. Natalie Frazier put down an ace down the stretch and Mannebach’s fourth kill clinched the opener for the Crusaders.
“Whenever we just, like, keep our foot on the gas and we focus on the little things, we can always crawl back up again,” Mannebach said.
Blocks by Mannebach and Lyon helped break an 18-all tie as the Crusaders finished the second set on a 7-0 blitz. Emma Livesay’s ace made it 24-18 and Mannebach’s third spike of the frame gave St. Dominic a 2-0 lead.
“They've played together a long time, and they have big goals,” Bland said. “So, every single time they go out there, if you watch them, they're always super focused. Ƶ want to win every set. They don't take time off. If we do lag in the score or something starts to go wrong, they're all like, all ears, ready, coachable, ready to fix whatever it is that's the problem. So, it doesn't usually last a whole set for us.”
Sick leave
Marquette was without several key players including Rachel Briedenbach and Taylor Twyman due to illness. Breidenbach averages 5.13 assists a game and Twyman provides a net front presence at middle blocker.
“I'm extremely proud of them, because this was the very first time we ran this lineup ever,” Marquette coach Tammy Becker said. “We had a libero for outside, which we've never done. We had a girl playing middle who's never played middle. We had a setter out, middle out, so, you know, we were juggling pieces around, but for the scores to be what they were, it wasn't like we're blown out of the water. So, we'll grow from it. We'll get stronger from it.”
Up next
Marquette: Hosts Incarnate Word at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday. It will be the first meeting between the programs since October 16, 2020.
St. Dominic: Hosts Incarnate Word at 6 p.m. Wednesday. The Crusaders split two regular season matches against the Red Knights last season.
Waterloo (16-9 overall) is showing signs of outgrowing issues (and a young team) just in time for the postseason.
St. Dominic's Brytn Lyon (4) during a match against Marquette, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, at St. Dominic High School in O’Fallon, Mo. Michael Gulledge, Special to the Post-Dispatch