By RYAN ARENA

Sports Editor

All St. Charles needed was to capture one more game in its Wednesday match at Hahnville to bring home its first win of the season. But while St. Charles led 2-0 in the match, Hahnville threatened to make it interesting in the third game, going ahead 11-5.

Then Meg Gustafson stepped up to serve, and the Comets soared to victory.

By the time the Tigers finally broke the junior’s serve, the Comets were up 23-11, and the match was in hand. The Comets logged a 25-11, 25-18, 25-13 victory.

Gustafson finished with a staggering 20 aces thanks in large part to that end of match run.

“It’s big to get the first win out of the way,” said St. Charles Coach Brandy Ryan. “We had good motivation, especially playing a 5A school. We really did ourselves some good today.”

Brooke Becker had 13 kills for St. Charles (1-3). Courtney Western added 16 assists. Kadie Levantino had seven digs.

Ryan said that offensive execution was a major key to the win, something that her team has been striving to improve early in the season.

“We did a good job executing, and a good job maintaining our focus the entire game,” she said. “I felt like we were unified. It wasn’t like the opener, when they seemed intimidated. We played our game, and we played relaxed.”

Ryan’s also glad to see the schedule back to normal after weeks of hurricane-induced shuffling.

“We were able to make up games, but we also lost a number of them. We lost a tournament that we may have played five times,” she said. “Now, we’ve been able to get some good practice time in. It’s made a big difference.”