Veritas Christian's Kristie Tiegreen spikes the ball. Tiegreen led the Eagles' attack as they swept a home quad Tuesday at Veritas.

It didn’t take the Veritas Christian volleyball players long to look like they were in midseason form.

In their season-opening home quadrangular Tuesday at East Lawrence Athletic Center, Veritas swept Manhattan Chief (25-19, 25-16), Kansas School for the Deaf (25-10, 25-11) and Grandview Christian (25-23, 28-26).

“That’s really exciting, especially since we have three seniors now,” senior Kristie Tiegreen said. “It’s pretty exciting to sweep your first home quad.”

Those three seniors – Adrian Willems, Becky Woods and Tiegreen – propelled the Eagles to the sweep of the home opener.

Tiegreen controlled the net with a team-high 20 kills, while the rest of the Eagles collected 13 combined kills against their three opponents.

“My favorite thing is being in the front row because my adrenaline gets going, and it gets me really excited to get a kill,” Tiegreen said. “I try to jump all over the net some times, but it’s fun.”

But Tiegreen, the consummate team player, pointed out that without Willems setting her up, it would have been difficult to deliver the kills – something coach Kyle Billings agreed with.

“Adrian’s a wonderful setter,” Billings said. “The fact that we have such a good hitter in Kristie also complements the fact that we have such an unbelievable setter in Adrian. They complement each other so well. It wouldn’t matter how good Adrian is if we didn’t have somebody receiving them, and it wouldn’t matter how good Kristie is if we didn’t have somebody setting her up.”

On the serving end of the three-match sweep, Veritas had 32 aces led by Woods’ nine aces to go with four kills.

The biggest ace of the quad came from sophomore Emily Zimmerman’s eighth and final ace of the day.

Grandview, fighting to extend the match to a third game, had a one-point advantage at 26-25 in Game 2. Following a Tiegreen kill to tie the game, Zimmerman served up an ace to give the Eagles their first lead since they were up 22-21.

“That was huge. This is the first year Emily has played for us, and she’s only a sophomore,” Billings said. “For her to be in a pressure serve situation, like that, and be able to still serve hard to the point where we get a point off of it, was just great to see one of the younger players to be able to step up like that.”

Billings said he found it important that his team was tested early in the season.

“That was healthy for us to be in that situation to see if they can pull it through,” the Veritas coach said. “I think we were our worst enemy those games, and that’s good, too, to see how we can get out of a funk like that.”

Veritas will be back in action next Tuesday at the McLouth quad to face higher-level competition.

“We’ll be playing schools that are a lot bigger than us, and that will just kind of show how good we are and how well we can stand up against that,” Billings said.