Stevenson sparks Oakdale's first volleyball victory of season

Sep. 21—Oakdale senior hitter Molly Stevenson's powerful spike was touched by two Frederick players before it finally sailed out of bounds near the scorers table.

Hard-to-handle hits from Stevenson are nothing new, but this one was noteworthy. It gave the Bears, who opened the season with a gauntlet-like schedule while they broke in several newcomers, their first match-winning point of the season.

Entering Thursday's match with an 0-3 record, host Oakdale bounced back from a slow start against the scrappy and energetic Cadets en route to a 25-23, 25-22, 25-16 win.

Holding a cutout picture of her face after the match, Stevenson was asked about her team's first win.

"It felt great," Stevenson said. "I definitely think we're going to be getting a lot more wins."

Stevenson, a senior who will continue her career at Ursinus, contributed a lot to this victory. She finished with 11 kills and 13 digs and even chipped two aces and an assist. The performance was reminiscent of the kind she produced last year.

"She's even better this year," Bears coach Jim Dorsch said. "When she gets a good ball, she can do what she wants to with it. Nobody can stop her."

Last year, those good balls came from senior setter Ryan O'Neal, who earned Frederick News-Post All-County first-team honors.

With O'Neal gone, Stevenson has been building a connection with junior setters Ava Bilali (who had 23 assists against Frederick) and McKenzie Eacho.

"I've been working a lot with the setters to get the tempo down," she said.

Those are far from the only changes the Bears have been absorbing.

"We lost a lot of seniors, we lost a lot of experience. So we're playing with a lot of inexperience as far as a lot of people on this team who weren't even on varsity last year," Dorsch said. "It's just a big learning curve, and we're getting better slowly."

Granted, no matter how many experienced players the Bears brought into this season, they were bound to be confronted with serious challenges from the get-go.

Oakdale played two of its first three matches against reigning state champions, Urbana and North Hagerstown. They lost both matches 3-0.

"But I thought we played well against them. We just couldn't quite get over the hump," Dorsch said. "So we're coming along."

And Frederick showed Thursday that it was no pushover, leading by as many six points in the first set and hanging with the Bears most of the night.

"They're a scrappy team," Dorsch said. "[Frederick coach Courtney Hutchinson's] got them working hard."

But the Bears pulled even in the first set and won it, with Kay Angeh and Sabrina Stadelman getting kills on the final two points.

"We just had to re-set and focus," Stevenson said.

In the second set, Oakdale got the final three points on Stevenson's spike from the left side, Stadelman's kill and Eacho's set-ending ace.

Angeh finished with seven kills and one block for the Bears.

The Cadets (2-4) got plays from several sources, including Liliano Utu, whose kills were often followed by loud chants of "she's a freshman" by Frederick's JV players.

The Cadets also continued to hang with Oakdale after losing senior middle blocker Munira Akwada to an ankle injury in the second set. With her right leg propped up on a couple chairs on Frederick's bench, Akwada cheered her team on as it continued to battle.

The Cadets have been led this season by outside hitter Josie Eliot and libero Katie DeGirolamo.

"We definitely have been working hard in practices and games, trying to apply the things that we've worked on," said Hutchinson, a former Hood College volleyball player who is in her first year as Frederick's coach. "This is my first year of coaching, so it was definitely a learning curve for them and a learning curve for me as well."