Portage digs deep to top BHS

By Kevin Morales - Capital Newspapers

It was a team effort in the truest sense of the phrase.

Portage exhausted most of its bench, had players switch positions — and jerseys — and constantly made changes to find the right fit as the Warriors overcame a sluggish performance to beat Baraboo 3-1 Thursday in their home opener.

Errors plagued both teams throughout the four tight games, but it was Portage that found a way to win. The Warriors' success late in those games mostly stemmed from the service line, despite Portage committing 17 service errors.

In the pivotal fourth game, Portage trailed Baraboo 12-11 until sophomore Sydney Jacobs headed to the service line. Jacobs, who changed jerseys between the second and third games as she moved from setter to libero, served for five straight points and three aces to give Portage its first lead of the game. The Warriors never trailed again.

"Tonight it wasn't about six people who started, it was about all of them contributing," Portage coach Joann Armson said. "We're still trying to figure out who's going where, but we can't take 10 games to figure out what's going on."

Portage (1-1, 1-1 Badger North) freshman Caley McFarlane finished with a game-best 10 kills, while sophomore Mackenzie Ziegler finished with a game-high eight aces.

The Warriors trailed the T-Birds in all four games thanks to a variety of passing and serving errors. That prompted Armson, who said after the match she can't remember the last time one of her teams missed 17 serves, to start making changes after Baraboo won the second game to even the match score at 1.

That's when Jacobs switched to libero, Andrea Drew came in to help with setting and Morgan Dahlke came off the bench in addition to a host of other moves.

"We're just trying to do some things to get our passing better," Armson said. "We've got some hitters that'll put it down, now we've got to get the ball to them more consistently. I told them that we can switch any time here and at that point I thought we needed Sydney to maybe be a spark plug. Andrea has proven in practice that she can set so it's like, you know, we needed a change, we needed something to get us going."

Portage's struggled remained into the third game as the Warriors trailed 6-2 before Armson called timeout. Tied at 11, Portage took a 12-11 lead on a Baraboo error before Ziegler served to three consecutive aces to give Portage a 15-11 lead and the momentum as the Warriors won 10 of the final 16 points.

Baraboo looked poised to force a fifth game when it 6-3 lead in game four and the teams traded errors early on as the T-Birds eventually ran their lead to 12-10. That's when Jacobs stepped to the line for her five straight points, three of which landed for aces, as she propelled Portage to the win.

"Yeah, I was on a roll," Jacobs said. "It kept getting hotter and hotter and then I just kept saying 'get it over' and it just kept going. It felt good.

"Yeah we're still working on finding the lineup," she added. "I think the switches are good, it brings energy. We're still working on it.

After losing leads in all four games, Baraboo coach Gabe Sederberg said his team has a mental hurdle it needs to clear.

"Lot of mental mistakes and our passing. We get into games and then it just falls apart right at the end," Sederberg said. "That's definitely a mental thing because we pass well in the beginning of the games when we're up by a couple, but then we'll just have a five-point break where we can't pass to save our lives."

It was far from a picture perfect win for the Warriors, who dropped their season opener after a sloppy performance at Sauk Prairie.

"Let's put it this way, when we had a good pass... we scored. When we served the ball in, we forced them to make mistakes," Armson said. "It was our spurts of serving that brought us around to it and then we'd turn around and hurt ourselves by putting the ball in the net. Those are negative errors. I don't mind if they serve the ball out of bounds because that's being aggressive. When you hit the ball in the net it's not even giving the other team an opportunity to hit the ball."

Ziegler said many of the team's mistakes were the result of nerves.

"We know we have to pick our errors up but we can give each other energy and work off that," Ziegler said. "We were just nervous, it was our first home game so I think it's more of a mental thing."

Portage 3, Baraboo 1

Baraboo 19 25 17 19

Portage 25 21 25 25

BARABOO (LEADERS): Kills — Anderson 6. Blocks — Statz 1. Aces — Harrison 3. Assists — Harrison 9. Digs — Schultz 16.

PORTAGE (LEADERS): Kills — McFarlane 10. Blocks — Ziegler 6. Aces — Ziegler 8. Assists — Friedel 12. Digs — Ziegler 2.