Howell North Spikes Host St. Charles

Robin Yuede did not like what she was seeing from her team.

So the girls volleyball coach called a timeout.

Whatever she told her team worked as the Knights dominated from that point on in a 25-13, 25-9 victory at St. Charles High in a Gateway Athletic Conference cross-division match Tuesday evening.

“I basically said it’s time to get moving,” Yuede recalled. “We were not playing very well. We started out with two serve-outs and then I had to tell one of my aggressive servers to stay down just so we could get a ball in the court and I’m not happy.”

For Pirates coach Peggy Shelton, it was a frustrating evening that saw glimpses of excellent play.

“I’ve got a talented squad, but a very young squad,” Shelton said of her roster that includes one returning varsity player and a freshman. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, but they have a lot of passion and I have really have high hopes for them.

“They’re going to come together and I think they surprised themselves with what they were able to execute. However, consistently executing is the next step. We will continue to work hard and I know we’ll get it corrected.”

The two teams exchanged the first four points before the Pirates (0-3) opened a 4-2 early lead. Howell North (3-0) tied things up a 5-5, but then took a 7-6 lead on a Casey Joslin spike. That prompted the Yuede timeout.

“(St. Charles is) a good team and I knew they were going to come at us. We were just a little lackadaisical. We needed to be much more aggressive.”

The pep talk worked as the Knights rattled off the next four points and then built a 14-9 lead before cruising to the 25-13 win in the first game.

“She let us know what she thought and we picked it up from there,” Howell North senior Kaylyn Shinault said of Yuede. “We realized that we weren’t playing to our potential. We came together as a team and played the way we were supposed to.”

Shinault led all players with 14 service points and she – and Alex Oppenborn and Nicole Yuede – dominated service in the second game.

“I’ve been working on my jump serve and this was the first night I was actually able to get it down,” Shinault said. “I’m happy it worked out.”

North jumped out to an 11-3 lead before cruising to the 25-9 match-clinching win.

“I looked at Kaylyn and told her, ‘Go for it,’” Yuede said. “We worked on aggressive serves in practice and the serves we were doing, they were just kind of lobbing them over. I’d rather go out swinging. I looked at (Nicole Yuede) and told her to just be aggressive. We picked up our aggressiveness and started to get things to fall in, got a few more attacks and that made the difference.”