Joey Payeur
All signs had the Muskies junior girls’ volleyball team headed towards the NorWOSSA winner’s circle for the second-straight year.
Then the Dryden Eagles showed up to send the black-and-gold on a detour of disappointment.
The Muskies claimed the first set before dropping the next three in a 3-1 loss (20-25, 25-14, 25-18, and 25-23) in the league final Friday at Fort High.
“We needed all six going at the same time and we didn’t have that today,” lamented Muskie co-coach Bob Kowal after watching his regular-season champs end up with the silver medal as their 7-1 record fell by the wayside.
“Adyson Wilson-Hands played well and Carmen Hiebert played very well for us, but others didn’t and you can’t do that and win a championship game,” he reasoned.
The Muskies jumped out to 15-6 lead in the first set and made it look easy in doing so, but then faltered at the net and at the service line before hanging on.
Kowal went to some of his bench players to start the second set to see if they could light a spark under what looked like a Muskie team starting to go off the rails.
Instead, it was Dryden that vaulted out to a 15-5 lead to eventually even the match.
“We put the new players in for the second and normally they come back and give us that next-level effort,” noted Kowal.
“But we didn’t get into the game in the second set,” he added.
“Everyone was watching and expecting the other person to make plays.”
Missed serves also started to become a problem for Fort High as the match wore on.
“We had good stretches of serving, but we’ve been prone to making poor efforts in that area,” Kowal admitted.
“We’d battle back and then we would miss a serve,” he said. “It’s hard to accept that.”
The third set was close early but Dryden turned things in its favour by going on a 12-4 run.
With Fort High’s survival on the line late in an ultra-competitive fourth set that featured an astounding 11 ties, Kowal still wasn’t overly concerned.
“At 22-22, I was still comfortable with where we were at and thought we would be fine,” he remarked.
Dryden’s Emily Heil hit a kill shot wide to put the Muskies up 23-22, but Jamie Spencer’s own kill attempt smacked into the net to tie things again.
On the Eagles’ next serve, Wilson-Hands played the first pass cleanly straight up, but none of the Muskies moved in for a second hit as the ball hit the floor untouched to give Dryden match point.
“You saw on that 24th points, we had three girls looking at each other as to whose ball it was and that shouldn’t be happening at this time of the season,” stressed Kowal.
Wilson-Hands made a diving save during the next point but the Eagles set up the towering Heil, who out-jumped Spencer and Alex Spuzak at the net to tip it downwards off Spencer’s hands and then Spuzak’s to pound the final nail into the Muskies’ coffin.
“It just didn’t happen. It’s a tough one for the kids,” said Kowal.
“But they’ll be better for it, eventually.
“I’m disappointed for them but Dryden was better today,” he added.
“I’ll never believe we were the second-best team but sometimes it happens.”
Wilson-Hands, whose tear-stained face showed her anguish at falling just short of capturing back-to-back titles, said the Muskies were their own worst enemy.
“After the first set, we were getting real cocky,” she admitted. “All of us thought we had the match won already.
“Most games, we are on our game and today we were not,” she added.
“Dryden started swinging more in the second set and we just weren’t ready for it.
“Our serving was pretty bad,” Wilson-Hands conceded. “We need to breathe instead of going in and serving too quickly and rushing it.”
“You start missing serves and it’s hard to win, no matter who you’re matched up against,” agreed rookie Grace Petsnick, one of four Grade 9 players in the starting lineup.
“The philosophy of our coaches is serves win games.”
Petsnick was optimistic about next year’s outlook considering the vast wealth of young talent among the six players eligible to return.
“We’re pretty amazing in how we developed so much as a team and I’m still really proud of us,” she said before firing off a Mark Messier-like guarantee.
“Next year is something to look forward to,” Petsnick noted. “We’re going to win next year.
“That’s the plan.”
