Lucas Punkari
After finishing the regular season with a league-worst 1-7 record, not much might have been expected of the Muskies senior girls’ volleyball team when they took to the court for the NorWOSSA playoffs here last Wednesday.
But the black-and-gold burst through with their best performance of the season in the semi-final, capturing a thrilling five-set victory over the second-place Kenora Broncos (15-25, 25-21, 20-25, 25-17, and 15-9) before being swept in the final by the Dryden Eagles.
“The game was very exciting this morning,” noted Muskie head coach Duane Roen.
“I said to the girls this morning that whoever made the fewest mistakes will end up winning, and that’s what happened.”
After losing by 10 points in the opening set, the Muskies displayed a great amount of perseverance in the rest of the match, especially in the last two sets where they were able to erase deficits.
“In the last set, especially, Sarah Glover came up and consistently nailed her serves, and she got almost half of our points in that set,” Roen said.
After a final serve attempt by the Broncos slammed into the net, the Muskies celebrated with delight following their upset victory, which allowed the team to advance to the final against the first-place Eagles.
“That was easily our best game of the season,” Adriane Gurski enthused.
“As the game went on, we started to feel a little more confident out there, and I think that really started to show for us in the last two sets.
“And once we got the final point to win it, we were absolutely excited about going to the final,” she smiled.
But that was where the Muskies’ Cinderella run came to a screeching halt as the Eagles dominated Fort High in three sets (17-25, 6-25 and 14-25) en route to an 11th-straight NorWOSSA title.
“We kept with them early on, but then we started to make mistakes and get away from the game plan and Dryden was able capitalize on those errors,” Roen noted.
“However, the girls did preform the best that they could all day long and we can’t complain about that.”
“I’m not sure if maybe we were all just tired after what happened to us in winning that hard semi-final, but that seemed to be what happened to us,” reasoned captain Caitlin Sande.
“But just to make it into the final was a huge accomplishment, and we are very happy about that.”
