It was pretty simple for the Calvary volleyball team Tuesday night.
When they passed the ball well, the Lady Lions were in the match. When they didn't, it amounted to way too many easy points for the Father Tolton Trailblazers.
Tolton served up 12 aces and made it tough for Calvary on several other serves, leading to easy points, and posted a 25-12, 25-16 win at the Calvary gym.
"We've had our ups and downs with (serve-receive)," Calvary coach Nikki Kueck said. "We've had strong days and as a whole this season, we've been stronger with it than past seasons. But we're still having our moments with it."
It wasn't Tolton's serving early on that looked to be problematic, however. The Trailblazers, with a decided height advantage on the Lady Lions, got blocks on the match's first two points.
But it didn't intimidate the Lady Lions, and the Trailblazers had just one block for a point the remainder of the match.
"I preach that all the time - you've got to keep swinging," Kueck said. "Find the holes, go around the blocks, tip over them. Whatever you do, do it with confidence. Don't stand down just because they're a foot taller than you."
But Tolton's height did help when it came to its hitting. The Trailblazers held a 7-6 lead in the first game before they got kills on five of the next eight points and pulled away to a 14-7 advantage.
The Trailblazers eventually led by as many as 13 points on two different occasions, the last time being the final score.
The second game started out better for Calvary, as the Lady Lions got a kill from Kara Bernskoetter and an ace from Savannah Laird to go with three Tolton errors while leading 5-2.
They later got five straight points on the serve of Brooke Rollins to go up 12-7 to force Tolton to burn a timeout.
Whatever the coach said in the huddle, it got through to the Trailblazers, as they won 18 of the next 22 points to close out the match.
"I told the girls before the match, "It's not necessarily how many kills we get, it's how much smarter we play than them,'" Kueck said. "I think my girls do a good job. They see the floor well and try to find the holes. It was evident at the beginning of the second set, we were finding the holes and getting it down.
"But we let ourselves get into a funk there."
Calvary had six hitting errors late to go with two serving errors and a passing error.
"We have too many ups and downs," Kueck said. "They were pumped for this game, they knew they wanted it, we just didn't show the best showing of ourselves."
Jena Fischer and Bernskoetter had two kills apiece to pace Calvary, which dropped to 8-5-1 on the season. Rebecca Thompson led the team with three assists. Rollins had six service points with one ace, while Laird had four service points, including three aces.
Calvary will play Friday at Dixon.
In the JV game, Tolton claimed a 25-20, 25-19 victory.