Down one of their top hitters, the Jefferson City Lady Jays needed someone to step into a more prominent role Tuesday against Battle.
Senior outside hitter Zoe Stratman answered the call, helping the Lady Jays defeat the Lady Spartans 25-19, 25-19 at Fleming Fieldhouse.
"We complimented her on doing a nice job of being the glue and kind of pulling people back together," Jefferson City coach Lisa Hoffmeyer said. "I felt like she had a really good attacking night and had some good conversations with her teammates when things were not going well, walked over and had those one on ones that sometimes people need from a friend and a teammate."
Stratman had seven kills, seven digs and two aces in the match.
The Lady Jays didn't get off to the best start as the Lady Spartans led early on in the first set before an 8-2 run led to a 19-14 advantage for Jefferson City.
"Not our best outing," Hoffmeyer said. "We talked about it in the locker room we know when we are proud of our effort and we kind of came in kind of slumping our shoulders and just quietly coming into the locker room tonight, so we knew it wasn't our very best effort."
The set went back and forth from there with a Stratman kill making it 21-15 and an ace from Ella Wang making it 21-17. Maddie Jones finished off the first set with a kill.
"The thing we challenge our kids with is somebody has to step up and fill that void and it's not going to come from just one person," Hoffmeyer said of being without one of their hitters. "It's going to come from a cumulative effort and everybody doing their job to kind of fill that void."
The Lady Jays went to Annabelle Maassen often. She had four kills in the early going of the second set to give the Lady Jays an 8-4 lead. Maassen finished with 13 kills and nine digs.
"That's something we've come to expect her to do," Hoffmeyer said. "She's proved more than a few times she's capable of shouldering that load."
Paige Reeser led Jefferson City with 24 assists while libero Rylie Bohanan finished with eight digs.
Jefferson City led by as many as nine in the second set before Battle rallied to pull within 20-18. But the Lady Jays finished it off as Jones' ace made it 22-18 and a kill from Maassen closed out the match.
Jefferson City (8-6-1) has now own five of its last eight matches, including going 3-2-1 at the Hillcrest Invitational this past Saturday to earn a third-place finish.
"We feel like we really played our very best volleyball at that tournament," Hoffmeyer said. " We played some good competition and all day long we felt like we played good consistent volleyball."
Jefferson City plays Thursday at Fatima. The freshman match will start at 4:30 p.m. with the JV to follow at about 5:30 p.m. with the varsity play around 6:30 p.m.
In Tuesday's JV mach, Jefferson City defeated Battle 27-25, 25-23 to improve to 7-7-1. Jordan Niermeyer recorded six kills, Sydney Vogt had 12 service points and three kills and Deja Crumble tallied 10 service points and three kills.
Jefferson City won the freshman match 25-13, 25-12 to improve to 3-9-1. Shelby Mell had six aces, Emma Loesch finished with 10 digs and Abby Blake had four kills.