Warriors sweep Keota on senior night

VICTOR — The HLV-TC volleyball team got a sweep on senior night Thursday against Keota.

Five seniors played their last home regular season match — Aaliyah Cooper, Ayla Hall, Raegan Molyneaux, Lily Randall and Ema Roberts.

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“It’s been really great,” HLV-TC head coach Kayla Chizek said about working with the seniors. “They had fight and pushed to get every single ball tonight.”

The Warriors took the first set 25-20.

The widest margin of the night came in the second set. The Warriors won by nine, 25-16.

The set started out all Keota as HLV-TC fell behind 4-0.

Behind 7-5, the Warriors went on a 7-1 surge and never lost the lead.

Randall had four kills in the 7-5 run.

The Warriors slowly built their lead throughout the set, ending it on a kill from Caidyn Schmidt.

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Set three was the closest of the night with a 25-22 score.

The lead changed hands several times before the teams tied it up at nine.

The Warriors started to pull away after consecutive kills from Ema Roberts made the score 18-12.

Roberts added two more kills later in the set.

The Eagles fought back and made the match close as the Warriors struggled to close things out with errors.

A kill from Izzi Chalupa started the late run for the Eagles. They got the score to 23-22 after a defensive block.

An error and out-of-bounds shot ended the match.

Roberts led the team 11 kills, and Nicole Gensley had seven.

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The team also had four blocks and five aces.

The win put the Warriors at 11-13 for the regular season as they enter the conference tournament Monday and Thursday.

The team made a run last season, winning the conference tournament after making the gold bracket.

The Warriors will host Iowa Valley in the first round of regional play Oct. 21.

“We’ve talked a lot at practice that we want to play for as long as possible,” Chizek said. “We know we’re a competitive team, so we just want to show that moving forward.”