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Hannah Wold and Crown Point sweep Chesterton in sectional semifinals; Valparaiso rolls past Portage

Crown Point senior Hannah Wold had to learn the same lesson as every hitter: trust.

Whenever the 6-foot Wold, who hits from the right side, approaches the net for a kill, her eyes are focused on the ball in the air, not the opponents in front of her.

“I had to learn to listen to my back row,” said Wold, a Purdue Northwest commit. “I had to trust them and put the ball where they tell me. They know what’s open a lot more than I do.”

Wold’s taken those instructions to heart during her third varsity season and put them on display against Chesterton during Saturday’s Class 4A Crown Point Sectional semifinal.

The Bulldogs swept their conference rivals 25-14, 25-15, 25-15, advancing to Saturday night’s sectional semifinal against Valparaiso, which swept Portage 25-7, 25-16, 25-13 in the other semifinal.

Wold finished with nine kills and a team-high four blocks for Crown Point (27-6), which jumped out to quick leads in each of its three sets against Chesterton (18-13). Wold credited head coach Alison Duncan with helping her improve on her hitting, while the blocks were the result of extra practice time with assistant coach Erienne Barry, who played at Boise State.

“I’d been drifting a lot on my blocks,” Wold said. “We focused on it at every practice, and it’s improved tremendously.”

Duncan said she noticed some early butterflies from her team in each set.

“For the first six or seven points, I could feel them being a little nervous,” she said. “Once we settled into each set, then we were fine.”

Valparaiso (17-16) notched its third win of the season over Portage (3-27) and again received a strong performance from freshman setter Camyrn Kreul, who had a team-high 13 assists in the win. Like Wold, Kreul has spent this season working on the setter-hitter connection, just from the opposite end.

“As a setter, you have to be comfortable with everyone,” Kreul said. “I had to work on opening my ears and listening to the hitters more. There’s a lot more communication (in high school).”

Kreul entered Saturday’s semifinal with a team-high 562 assists this season, and the top targets of her passes Saturday were the usual suspects: classmate Kennedy Wagner, who had nine kills, and junior Megan Gatz, who had six kills.

Coach Katie Lenard said the Vikings zeroed in on their end of the court during the victory.

“We focused more on our abilities and getting things taken care of,” Lenard said. “Sometimes we get too focused on the other team instead of what we can do.”

Dave Melton is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.