Staff photo / Brad Emerine Jackson-Milton libero Camryn Mitchell serves during Tuesday’s second game vs. Mineral Ridge.

NORTH JACKSON — After both volleyball teams opened their season with victories the night before, Jackson-Milton played host to Mineral Ridge on Tuesday night.

The Rams looked more polished and showed depth and experience in pulling away with a 25-17, 25-14, 25-22 victory in the Mahoning Valley Athletic Conference opener for both schools.

“We were like 22-2 last year and so going into this season we’re making a push to be even better,” said Rams’ senior setter Danielle Aulet, who registered 26 assists, 11 digs and five kills — all on quick dinks over the net into open spots on the Jackson-Milton defense. “We started out pretty well tonight and got better. We’re aiming for better.

“We’re a close group and our communication on and off the floor is pretty strong. We’re going to make the best of this unique season and just see what we can do to get better and have an even better year than last year.”

Jackson-Milton is trying to adjust to its lineup after losing eight seniors to graduation following last season.

“We’re pretty young, with three sophomore starters and another sophomore in that main group, too,” Blue Jays’ coach Sue Prozy said. “I think the girls are still adjusting, too, because the lineup was just recently finalized. They’re still getting comfortable with each other. What I love about them is that they work hard and will never give up no matter what situation we’re in.

“We met before Monday’s match and we had some seniors say that they’re happy to have a season and that they want to truly enjoy it. They’re working hard, but not knowing if they were going to have a season or how long it’s going to last, they said they’re fortunate and they just want to have fun, work hard and improve.”

The opening game was back-and-forth early before the Rams built a 14-9 lead. The hosts scored the next three before Morgan Sigley’s ace capped a five-point run to push Mineral Ridge’s lead to 19-12 and force a Jackson-Milton timeout. The margin reached 23-15 before the Blue Jays shaved some of their deficit, but the Rams took momentum into the second game.

Game 2 was tied 11-all after Jackson-Milton’s Logan Grunder slammed a kill. But the Rams responded with 14-3 run. A kill and an ace by Katelyn Lesko got it started and Jersey Tucker logged three kills in the stretch before Lesko’s kill ended the second game.

“We lost the first game of the season and just got the jitters out and came back and won,” Lesko said. “We wanted to start well tonight and we were able to do that. We settled in, played our game and played with energy.”

Lesko, the daughter of coach Ron Lesko, finished with 13 kills and 11 points.

“The four seniors — Danielle, Jersey, Morgan and me — have a lot of chemistry because we’ve been playing together since seventh grade,” Katelyn said. “Then we’ve got (sophomore) Hannah Loeb and (junior) Megan Gerberry with us and they fit in well and communicate. We’re all just trying to do our share and look toward our goals — to win, contend for a league title and go far in the district (tournament).”

Tucker added eight kills for Mineral Ridge, which played a nip-and-tuck third game before taking the lead for good at 18-16 on a kill from Loeb.

“We work extremely hard on serving and passing and ball control because we don’t have a lot of height,” Katelyn Lesko said. “So those are the things that carry us. We jump high and swing hard and we’re aggressive to help make up for our lack of size.”

Ron Lesko thinks the maturity of his group and ability to rely on ball-control will be a big benefit as the season unfolds.

“We can put pressure on the other teams because we’re usually in our offense thanks to our serve receive, passing and setting,” he said. “When you’ve got a setter like Danielle, who has the biggest heart in the world and is a tremendous athlete, and Katelyn is a really good outside hitter. Both have strong work ethics.

“We’ve got a very strong senior class in terms of leadership, it’s not just those two. Right now, I’m just happy the girls are on the floor.”

Prozy thought her team played well and hung in there in all three games, but just had some rough patches.

“I thought our defense was doing well and we were sitting back waiting on their big hits from (Lesko) and Jersey and then Danielle started tipping on us and we had some hesitation, which happens with sophomores,” she said. “We made a lot of those ‘is that your ball or my ball’ situations. We did pretty well with serve receive. I’m happy with the way we played, we just have to work out a few kinks.”