Hawks spoil spikers' post season party
Jim Den Hollander/Events
By Jim den Hollander
The quest for one final home appearance fell a night short for the Wisconsin Dells High School varsity volleyball team in Spring Green Friday night. Selected as the host venue for the Regional championship match, the Chiefs were looking to ride its playoff momentum against the Prairie du Chien Black Hawks into its match against the Region’s top seed, the River Valley Blackhawks. Like the Chiefs, the Hawks endured some late season adversity with a flu bug in town. However, the River Valley School District was able to keep the problem under wraps, a week after the Dells’ epidemic by closing only the Middle School. The Hawks showed why they were selected as the Region’s top seed, getting through what seemed a close opener, then proceeding to brush aside the Chiefs to win the WIAA Division 2 semi-final match 25-12, 25-13, 25-8. The Chiefs, perhaps hit by a case of nerves seemed to struggle all night with communication and serve receive, never getting a chance to fire up the Columbia Blue machine. The loss to the Hawks eliminated the Chiefs from the post season and effectively ended the team’s season. Team members, in particular the seniors, didn’t take the loss well. There is always some emotion when the volleyball season ends, but clearly, this team felt it was competitive and should have been able to at least put up a tougher fight against the Region’s top seed. The team’s six seniors including Kristin Oines, Nicole Gantz, Tricia Gussel, Ashley Brown, Katie Piekarski, Trudy Stanton and Tess Myklebust all seemed devastated by the loss. After some emotional hugs with fellow players as well as a surprisingly large contingent of Dells’ students who made the trip, Tess Myklebust said the team was confident going into the match. "Yeah, we were, we were confident. We didn’t want to be over confident. We knew what they did, so we thought that we had it, but...I don’t know." Unfortunately, said Myklebust, it seemed the Chiefs picked a bad night to come up a little flat. "They did what we thought they were going to do, but...not everything clicked (for us) I guess," said Myklebust adding the team seemed comparable to DeForest, a team they played earlier in the season. "They were more competitive, like in our tournament, Deforest, they were competitive like that," said Myklebust, adding "With DeForest, we beat them in a game and I know we could have done it, but not tonight I guess." It seemed the Chiefs may get an emotional boost early in the second
half from senior Kristin Oines who, in an effort to get to a ball out of play, went crashing into the bleachers. Clearly injured and shook up to some extent, Oines refused to leave the floor. The move seemed to inspire the Chiefs briefly, but ultimately, it wasn’t enough to get them back into the match.
Myklebust said she was a little worried they were going to lose a key player.
"No not really (it didn’t change anything)," said Myklebust. "It did make me a little nervous, seeing that she’s been one of our setters all year long. When she went down, I was a little nervous, but shes’ tough...so, it was okay."
Head coach Cyndy Collins agreed the Chiefs were prepared for the match.
"You know, everything they threw at us, we knew what was coming. We knew what to expect and I really thing, they executed what we expected," said Collins. "I really do believe that we came in prepared. We just didn’t execute on our side of the net. And, offensively, they hit very very well, you know, we knew we had to block really well. We had two blocks tonight."
The shame of it for the Chiefs is they lost to a team it seemed on most nights they could be very competitive with.
"That’s what we told them last night too, you know after we knew what they were going to do, I said, you know, I think we can compete (with them), we do have to come and play though. That’s what’s important."
The Chiefs trailed from the start in the opening match, but early on, it looked like it would be a close contest. However, Collins said the fact River Valley pulled away from them in that contest, didn’t hurt the team overall.
"You know, I don’t think that this team ever gets down on themselves. I think if we lose that first one, it’s like at Wautoma last Friday – just do what we need to do, get our job done and we’ll be okay.
The win over the Chiefs only bought the Hawks a 24-hour reprieve. At Wisconsin Dells High school, second seeded Sauk Prairie advanced to Sectionals with a 25-22, 25-20, 25-16 win over River Valley.
Regional scores are in the Briefs column on page A11.