Thirty-four and zero.
That is Class B No. 2 Norris volleyball’s set record at home this season following Tuesday’s sweep over Class C2 No. 1 Lincoln Lutheran.
The Titans (31-1) defeated the Warriors 25-20, 26-24, 25-22 to complete a perfect 14-0 record at home this season.
“That was one of our goals; we knew this was our last one of the regular season,” Norris coach Christina Boesiger said. “It was close. I wouldn’t say that was our cleanest game, but that’s the thing about this year. We said it’s not always going to be pretty. I don’t think our hitting percentage was great, but everything else we did a good job at.”
Norris hit .147 (its third-lowest attack percentage of the season), but the Titans held Lutheran — hitting over .300 on the season heading into Tuesday — to .059.
Norris led wire-to-wire in set one, but the second game was a different story. After a few lead changes throughout, the Warriors won the race to set point, taking a 24-22 lead and threatening the Titans’ spotless home record.
However, Norris buckled down and closed the set on a 4-0 run featuring three Lutheran errors and a kill from sophomore Alli Bornschlegl.
“I was like, ‘We have to score our own points and stop giving them points,” Boesiger said. “We didn’t want it to be a four- or five-setter against them and our goal was three sets. So I think they just kind of dialed in and got regrouped and pulled it out.”
The third set saw more back-and-forth play and a couple of lead changes. Norris jumped ahead 23-20 late before a pair of errors allowed the Warriors to pull within one and force a timeout from the home team. Out of the break, the Titans went to their star hitter in Long Beach State commit Anna Jelinek, and the 5-foot-9 senior delivered with a kill to earn match point.
Fellow senior Lexi Hasselbalch stepped back to the service line with a chance to complete the sweep and delivered a bullet the Warriors couldn’t handle, resulting in an overpass that Jelinek slammed home for her 16th kill of the night.
Jelinek hit .300 on the night (twice as high as the second-most efficient attacker in the match on either side) and added 25 digs. She already put up terrific numbers as a junior but has upped her efficiency even more this year, averaging 4.4 kills per set on .352 hitting and 4.0 digs per set.
“She’s phenomenal,” Boesiger said. “We needed to get her the ball more tonight, actually. Her range of shots, and she can be mid-air, and we’ll yell ‘zone four,’ and she can do it literally when she’s in the air. So she’s definitely a special player, and she’s fun to watch.”
Making Jelinek’s increased efficiency even more impressive is that she’s doing it while adjusting to a different setter, or rather two of them.
Last year, Malorie Boesiger — the daughter of the head coach — broke 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 stole her sophomore season from her, and Norris had to scramble to find a solution heading into the year. Seniors Zoe Rademacher and Harper Gable stepped up and changed positions as Norris switched to a two-setter offense. They’re averaging a combined 10.1 assists per set and the Titan offense hasn’t really missed a beat despite the absence of Boesiger, one of the best 2027 setter prospects in the region who will be highly recruited.
“It has just been a crazy run,” Coach Boesiger said. “I feel like when we told everyone that Malorie was out, we all kind of had some tears, but I saw the looks on their faces, and I was like, ‘OK, this is not changing your goal. It’s not going to change our outcome. We might get there a little bit differently; we’re not going to be, probably, super-fast and speedy. We’re going to go back to the basics.’ Everyone, I feel like, really took ownership of what their role was.
“Our passers, ‘Hey, you guys gotta be better; we don’t have experienced setters.’ Then to have Harper and Zoe be like, ‘Hey, I’ll do it.’ That’s not easy, and they’ve set 1000s of balls and put in so much time to be able to put up a consistent ball. And then our hitters, they’re going to be better for this because they hit a ball that’s high, low, in, off — they’re having to adjust. Kind of what I told them after the game, we knew we weren’t going to look perfect all season long. We were going to have moments of ‘that was ugly,’ but we just have to win the ugly points.
“It’s been great. They’re just focused, and I think once they realized, ‘Hey, we’re going to be OK; we’ve got this.’ Now it’s just believing and just keep getting better. I think we still have a ceiling to reach.”
Thought the younger Boesiger hasn’t been able to contribute on the court, she’s doing everything she can to make a difference from the sideline, perhaps taking a few cues from her mother in the process.
“She’s amazing,” Coach Boesiger said. “She is the best setter coach out there. I don’t know if you saw her tonight, from the bench she’s like ‘Mom, her left hand…’ Or we’ll talk about it in practice, after practice. She sees the game from a very different level, especially for a 16 year old. She studies film, she watches, and so she’s been the best setter coach ever. It’s been hard; she’s played with these girls since she was a second grader and they were fourth graders. But she knew this was what her role was going to be, and, man, she is just doing amazing. The feedback she gives, I’ll go to say something, and she’ll beat me to it, and I’m like ‘OK, Mal, you’ve got it.’ Or the girls will come out of the game and they’ll turn to her like, ‘Mal, what do I need?’ So it’s cool to see them trusting her as well.”
Tuesday’s match featured teams with a combined record for 59-3 heading in. Lincoln Lutheran, the reigning Class C2 champion led by Nebraska libero commit Keri Leimbach (33 digs on Tuesday), fell to 29-3. Those three losses have come to Class B No. 3 Waverly in five, unbeaten Class C1 No. 1 Minden in five and the Titans, three teams with a combined record of 85-8. The Warriors have only dropped one other set all season.
“This game was perfect for us,” Coach Boesiger said. “We needed something like this. Anytime you can play a great team, I think it shows you what you need to work on. I think our part of it was more just a few points of lack of discipline or movement or just not moving as fast as we want to. But it’s great playing teams like this.”
Norris has one match remaining in the regular season as a trip to Lincoln Standing Bear awaits on Thursday. Coach Boesiger said she likes the mindset of her team as the Titans gear up to make another run at a state title — with the nine-time reigning champion Skutt Catholic SkyHawks looming at the end of the road.
“I think that’s one thing this year that they’ve really learned is do not panic,” Coach Boesiger said. “There are times where maybe in a tight situation, maybe they would panic, but if things start not going great or our offense is lost a little bit, all I have to say is, ‘Hey, I told you, this was going to happen. We’re fine. Go back to what you know — our ball control, our passing, our smart shots,’ and that seems to kind of calm them down. If you panic in those situations, it’s not going to go well. And they’ve learned … it’s OK to not be perfect.”
Norris isn’t perfect, but it’s as close as a team can be with the lone blemish on its record a 2-1 tournament loss to Class A No. 1 Papillion-La Vista South. Class B subdistrict play begins on Oct. 29 and the state tournament will run Nov. 6-9.
