Mitch Calvert
The Muskie girls’ volleyball teams showed spurts, but couldn’t put it all together in losing to the Dryden Eagles in their respective NorWOSSA finals here Friday.
The seniors fell in straight sets by scores of 25-19, 25-11, and 25-19.
“Before the game, I told the girls to give their best out there and that’s all I could ask for, and they did that,” coach Duane Roen noted.
“The biggest thing we ran into was a little bit of serve receive [problems],” he added. “You can’t make any mistakes against Dryden, and we made a few too many.”
After sweeping the Kenora Broncos in the semi-final earlier Friday by scores of 25-11, 25-17, and 25-19, the seniors looked to have a lot of momentum early in scoring the first three points of the opening set against Dryden.
But a serve into the net turned the tide in the Eagles’ favour—and they never looked back.
The black-and-gold showed a lot of resiliency in the second set, battling back from a 9-1 deficit to make it 11-8, but again the Eagles swayed the momentum and went up two sets to none.
The Eagles then looked well on their way to an easy win in the third set, but the Muskies nearly erased a 16-6 deficit, making it 16-14 before the Eagles again turned things around.
Those eight-straight points came with Grade 11 player Katrina Wreggitt serving as the squad temporarily seemed to be taking the match over once again.
“I think they were probably the best [sets] we played all year against Dryden, for sure,” Wreggitt remarked.
Roen said his players showed a lot of heart in battling back in the third set despite the huge hole they had to climb out of.
“A lot of long rallies; a lot of balls that I thought were going to hit the floor didn’t,” Roen said of the near-comeback. “They were going through chairs and into the stands—they were doing whatever they could to keep the ball in the air.”
One such rally had Emma Elliot send her teammates on the bench scattering as she kept a ball alive while knocking several chairs flying.
“Dryden is a good team, they deserve kudos, but I think the girls deserve credit for their effort,” Roen added. “They came out strong, had a good run in the first set.
“[We] finished first in our pool in the last two tournaments we played in, and even though we couldn’t capitalize at the end, [we] showed [we] can play with the best of them.”
Roen admitted his team got a little complacent during the second and third sets in the semi-final against Kenora.
“The girls were going through the motions a bit, but I called a time-out late to tell them that a win would get them to the gold-medal game, and that seemed to turn it around,” he noted.
Silver for juniors
Despite going toe-to-toe with the Eagles all season and tying them with a 6-2 record in NorWOSSA (Dryden got first place and the bye due to a tiebreaker), the Muskie junior girls’ volleyball team looked over-matched in Friday’s final, losing by scores of 25-17, 25-9, and 25-17.
“I think the crowd was one thing, and at the same time, losing to Dryden the last time [in the regular season] kind of got them down on themselves,” junior coach Jason Cain said of his players.
“I know our bench was a little quiet, and when it comes down to NorWOSSA, you are playing your best seven or eight, but it really helps to have everyone going and into the game,” he stressed.
“In those games we beat Dryden [during the regular season], the bench was loud and the players on the court got energy from that.”
The juniors may have been deflated from their semi-final match earlier Friday against the Kenora Broncos, which went the full five sets before the black-and-gold salvaged a win by scores of 23-25, 25-13, 25-22, 22-25, and 15-11.
The big crowd also seemed to work against the Muskies. The Dryden Eagles’ cheerleaders got behind their team and were loud throughout despite the efforts of a few Fort High students to counteract them.
“We had them focusing on the game and avoiding distractions [in previous wins over Dryden], but for some reason that stopped today,” Cain remarked. “Dryden came here to win, they played to our weaknesses.
“They tipped on us the whole game because when they hit on us before, we were able to stop them,” he noted. “They adjusted and give them credit for that.”
