“Norris Volleyball completes a flawless season win at home”

Thirty-four and zero.

That’s the home record set by No. 2 Class B Norris volleyball this season after defeating No. 1 Class C2 Lincoln Lutheran on Tuesday.

The Titans (31-1) defeated the Warriors 25-20, 26-24, 25-22 to post a perfect 14-0 home record this season.

“That was one of our goals; “We knew this was our last game of the regular season,” Norris coach Christina Boesiger said. “It was close. I wouldn’t say it was our cleanest game, but that’s what’s special about this year. We said it won’t always be pretty. I don’t think our scoring rate was great, but we did well in everything else.”

Norris hit .147 (the third-lowest offensive percentage of the season), but the Titans held Lutheran – over .300 on the season through Tuesday – to .059.

Norris led from the start in the first set, but the second game was a different story. After a few lead changes over time, the Warriors won the race for points, taking a 24-22 lead and threatening the Titans’ flawless home record.

However, Norris relented and closed the set with a 4-0 run that featured three Lutheran errors and a kill from sophomore Alli Bornschlegl.

“I thought, ‘We have to score our own points and not give them any more points,'” Boesiger said. “We didn’t want it to go to four or five sets against them and our goal was three sets. I think they just dialed in, regrouped and pulled it out.”

In the third set there was more back and forth and some lead changes. Norris took a late 23-20 lead before two errors allowed the Warriors to get within one point and force a timeout for the home team. After halftime, the Titans went to their star hitter at Long Beach State, Anna Jelinek, and the 5-foot-10 senior delivered a kill to earn match point.

Teammate Lexi Hasselbalch stepped back to the service line and had a chance to complete the sweep and fired a shot that the Warriors couldn’t handle, leading to a flyover that Jelinek hit home for her 16th kill of the night.

Jelinek hit .300 on the night (twice as high as the second most efficient hitter in the game on either side) and added 25 digs. She excelled as a junior, but has increased her efficiency even further this year, averaging 4.4 kills per set on .352 hits and 4.0 digs per set.

“She’s phenomenal,” Boesiger said. “We actually had to give her more possession tonight. Her firing range, and she can be in the air, and we call out “zone four,” and she can literally do it when she’s in the air. So she’s definitely a special player and fun to watch.”

What makes Jelinek’s increased efficiency even more impressive is the fact that she is doing so while adjusting to another setter, or rather two of them.

Last year, Malorie Boesiger — the head coach’s daughter — broke her older sister Maisie’s single-season program record for assists, dishing out 1,093 of them as a freshman for the Class B state runner-up.

Unfortunately, a knee injury forced her to miss her second season, leaving Norris looking for a solution at the start of the year. Seniors Zoe Rademacher and Harper Gable stepped up and switched positions as Norris switched to a two-set offense. They’re averaging a combined 10.1 assists per set and the Titan offense hasn’t had a real downturn despite the absence of Boesiger, one of the region’s top 2027 setter prospects who will be highly recruited.

“It was just an amazing run,” said coach Bösiger. “I feel like when we told everyone that Malorie was out, we all had tears in our eyes, but I saw the look on their faces and thought, ‘Okay, that doesn’t change your goal.’ It won’t change our outcome. Maybe we’ll get there a little differently; We probably won’t be super fast and quick. “We’re going to go back to basics.” I feel like everyone has really taken responsibility for their role.

“Our passersby: ‘Hey, you guys have to be better; “We don’t have any experienced setters.” Then Harper and Zoe say, “Hey, I’ll do it.” It’s not easy, and they’ve placed thousands of balls and put in so much time to get a consistent ball set. And then our hitters are better at it because they hit a ball high, low, in, out – they have to adapt. I told them after the game that we knew we weren’t going to look perfect all season. There were moments where we thought, “That was ugly,” but we just have to win the ugly points.

“It was great. They’re just focused and I think when they realized, “Hey, we’re going to be okay; We have this.’ Now all you have to do is believe and keep getting better. I think we still have to reach a ceiling.”

Although I thought the younger Boesiger wasn’t able to contribute on the court, she’s doing everything she can to make an impact from the sidelines, perhaps taking a few pointers from her mom along the way.

“She’s great,” coach Boesiger said. “She is the best setter coach ever. I don’t know if you saw her tonight, from the bench she says, “Mom, her left hand…” Or we talk about it in training, after training. She sees the game from a completely different perspective, especially for a 16-year-old. She studies film, she watches, and so she was the best setter trainer of all time. It was hard; She has played with these girls since she was a second grader and they were fourth graders. But she knew this would be her role, and man, she does it amazingly. Based on the feedback she gives, I’ll say something and she’ll beat me to it and I’ll say, “Okay, Mal, you got it.” Or the girls will leave the game and turn to her, “Mal, what do I need?’ So it’s cool to see that they trust her too.”

Teams entered Tuesday’s game with a combined record of 59-3. Lincoln Lutheran, the reigning Class C2 champion, led by Nebraska libero Keri Leimbach (33 points Tuesday), fell to 29-3. Those three losses came to Class B No. 3 Waverly in five, undefeated Class C1 No. 1 Minden in five and the Titans, three teams with a combined record of 85-8. The Warriors only lost one other set all season.

“This game was perfect for us,” said coach Bösiger. “We needed something like this. Whenever you can play against a great team, I think it shows you what you need to work on. I think for us it was more a matter of a few points of lack of discipline, lack of movement, or just not moving as fast as we wanted to. But it’s great to play against teams like that.”

Norris has one game left in the regular season as a trip to Lincoln Standing Bear awaits him on Thursday. Coach Boesiger said she likes her team’s attitude as the Titans prepare for another shot at a state title – with the nine-time defending champion Skutt Catholic SkyHawks down the road.

“I think that’s one thing they’ve really learned this year: Don’t panic,” coach Boesiger said. “There are times when they might panic in a tense situation, but when things stop going well or our offense slows down a little bit, all I have to do is say, ‘Hey, I told you that would happen.’ happen. We’re fine. “Go back to what you know – our ball control, our passing, our smart shots,” and that somehow seems to calm them down. If you panic in such situations, things will not go well. And they learned…it’s okay to not be perfect.”

Norris isn’t perfect, but it’s as close as a team can get with the only blemish on its record: a 2-1 tournament loss to Class A No. 1 Papillion-La Vista South. Play in the Class B subdistrict begins Oct. 29 and the state tournament runs Nov. 6-9.