You can forgive Morris volleyball coach Scott Howell if he doesn’t want to play any more matches on Mondays.

For the third straight week, Morris struggled to find its rhythm in a Monday match, this time against Seneca. The Fighting Irish opened with a 25-23 win in the first set on their own floor, only to see Morris storm back and take the next two sets, 25-15, 25-16, to run away with the win.

Morris used its two middles – Rosemary Misener and Lily Hansen – to great effect in the final two sets. Misener was the bigger force offensively, as she finished with 10 kills, while Hansen had six kills and spearheaded the defensive effort with five blocks.

“This was a little tighter than we would like,” said Misener, who, along with teammates Brooke Thorson and Cami Pfeifer, has several relatives who live in Seneca. “It’s always fun to play Seneca because I know so many of their girls.

“We started kind of slow, which has been a bad habit for us that I hope we break soon. After the first set, we worked on getting more touches for the middles, and it worked out pretty well. We didn’t have very good serve receive in the first set, but once that got better, we had better passes to the setters, and we could run our offense a lot better.”

It wasn’t that way in the first set, as Seneca got out to a 9-5 lead after an ace by Emma Mino. Morris (9-3) scored the next three points on kills by Tessa Shannon (6 kills, 15 digs), Hannah Linn (team-high 12 kills) and Hansen to pull to within 9-8. Morris tied it at 12, only to see Seneca go back ahead 14-12 on a Morris serving error and then a hitting error. Later in the set, the Irish (11-5) got an ace from Lexie Buis to lead 20-17, but Morris rallied again and tied it at 23 on a combined block by Hansen and Olivia Peterson. Seneca took the first set on a block by Tessa Krull and an ace by Aurora Weber.

“They missed a few serves in the first set, and we were able to take advantage of that,” Seneca coach Noah Champene said. “Then we came out flat in the second set, and we struggled to pass the rest of the match. We had a couple of runs in the third set, but Morris’ middles are tough, and they got their hands on a lot of our attacks.

“At the end of the day, we are pretty happy that we took a good Class 3A team like Morris to three sets. But, I know I have seen our girls play better than we did tonight.”

Morris jumped out to a 6-2 lead early in the second set and kept the pressure on. They led 14-5 before Seneca got a kill, then an ace, from Mino. Morris sandwiched kills by Peterson and Shannon around a combined block by Hansen and Alexis Williams to move out to a 17-7 lead. Misener had a pair of kills in the final stretch, and the set ended with a kill by Hansen.

Seneca was able to keep it closer in the second set, but Morris led throughout. The biggest Morris lead was 16-10 before Seneca scored three straight points on a block by Graysen Provance and a pair of Morris hitting errors to draw to 16-13. Morris led 19-15 before another kill by Misener gave them a 20-15 lead. Williams followed with two straight aces, and Linn had back-to-back kills to make it 24-15. After Seneca got a point on a serving error, Linn ended the match with a kill.

Williams had 12 assists to go with two aces, while Thorson, who was crowned as Morris’ Homecoming Queen on Monday morning, led the team with 21.

“It was another Monday slow start for us,” Howell said. “We missed a lot of serves in the first set, and our serve receive was pushing the ball too close to the net. Once we figured out our serves and got the ball to the setters in the second and third sets, we played a lot better.

“Rosemary just brought a different kind of excitement tonight. She really wanted this match and was very aggressive. When our middles are getting good touches, we are a much better team.”