Wolverines win district, will face Janesville at state

Wed, 11/01/2017 - 4:34pm admin

TABOR - East Mills volleyball advanced to state for the first time in school history with a 25-16, 25-14, 25-19 sweep of Essex in the Class1A, Region 2 finals last Tuesday in Tabor.

“We told them, ‘you’ve got to communicate every play,’” East Mills head coach Connie Viner-Blank said. “They did. This was the cherry on the top. It’s excellent timing to be playing our best volleyball right now. The whole team played so great together. Tonight was electric.”

The No. 8 seeded Wolverines (24-8) will face top seeded Janesville (34-7) in the quarterfinals at state Nov. 8. First serve at the U.S. Cellular Center in Cedar Rapids is set for 6 p.m.

Against Essex, a team they swept two weeks earlier, East Mills opened on an 8-2 run in the opening set an cruised to the 25-16 win.

The Wolverines continued to dominate in the second set, seemingly to take advantage of the miscommunication and errors from the Trojanettes. East Mills opened 3-0, and never let the Trojanettes get any closer than three points the rest of the way.

In the final set, Essex took the first lead of the evening with a 6-5 score, but the Wolverines went on a seven-point run to regain control and never trailed again.

Essex got within two at 19-17. But after the two teams exchanged points, East Mills ended the set and the match on a five-point run with the winning point being landed by Rachel Schafer.

“I’m speechless,” East Mills senior Gracee Meyer said after the match. “I am so proud of my team and so excited we made it. We’ve been working so hard, and we’ve been pushing hard in practice. We came in confident and positive and it paid off.”

Three Wolverines recorded double-doubles in the victory: Dezirae Drake, Alex Knop, and Shellby Moore. Drake had two kills, 23 assists, and 12 digs; Knope 13 kills, 12 digs; and Moore had 11 kills and 11 digs while adding two blocks and an ace.

Other statistical leaders were Kassidy Croghan with one assist, 12 digs, one ace; Megan Hossle 10 digs; Meyer six kills, six digs, one block; Schafer six kills, 15 assists, eight digs, one ace; and Madison Williams two kills, one block.

“It feels amazing,” Viner-Black said. “We’ve always taken the team up every year to plant the seed for the last 11 years. You’ve got to see it. Now, we get to go there and we get to look up instead of looking down.”

Every Trojanette recorded a dig for the defense.

Vanessa Archer had two kills, two digs; Lexi Burnison one kill, nine assists, eight digs; Elise Dailey two digs; Kelsi Leininger one assist, 18 digs; Abbie Lindburg 13 assists, eight digs; Daiton Martin 13 kills, 15 digs, one ace; Jori Mosley two kills, eight digs; and Blu Ossian seven kills, seven digs, one block, one ace.

The Trojanettes end their season 22-7.

East Mills one win from state

Sweep of Boyer Valley has Wolverines in first ever regional final

The East Mills volleyball team is one win from the state tournament after sweeping Boyer Valley 25-11, 25-14, 25-15 in the Class 1, Region 2 semifinals Thursday in Malvern.

"We played very well tonight,” said East Mills coach Connie Blank, whose team improved to 23-8 with the win. “Our passing was much better than Monday. In the 3rd set, we had trouble finding the court with our hitting, but we stayed focused and finished strong with good ball control.

Alex Knop led East Mills with 12 kills and 13 digs. Gracee Meyer added nine kills and Shellby Moore and Dezirae Drake put down seven each.

Drake and Rachel Schafer each dished up 20 set assists.

The Wolverines were to face Essex (22-6) in last night’s regional final in Tabor. East Mills was 1-2 against the Trojanns this season with the win coming just over three weeks ago in a 25-18, 25-22, 25-18 sweep. Results of the regional final were no available at time of publication. See the Nov. 8 issue of The Opinion-Tribune for more coverage.

East Mills 25-25-25

Griswold 18-21-18

It wasn’t exactly a wire-to-wire win, but it was as close, and as unexpected, as it could get.

East Mills trailed only briefly 2-1 in the opening set and then never got behind again in a 25-18, 25-21, 25-18 sweep of Griswold in the Class 1A, Region 2 quarterfinals last Monday in Malvern.

“We didn’t expect a sweep,” said East Mills coach Connie Blank, whose team lost in a 2-0 sweep to the same Tigers way back in August. “We expected they’d give us a tough match and they did that. It wasn’t easy. I knew we’d battle and we had to play our game. I still think we played a little slow but it was good to see we could do this.”

After getting off to a slow start– and trailing ever so briefly – in tight opening match, the Wolverines (22-8) began to assert their will late with its front row. East Mills finished with seven kills in the opening set but it was the continuing pressure put on the Tigers’ defense by Alex Knop, Gracee Meyer and Shellby Moore that set the tone for the match.

“We don’t just have one hitter,” Blank said. “Alex is leading the team in kills but we have several other hitters and we did a really good job placing the ball in the corners for our hitters.”

East Mills opened the second set on a 7-1 run only to see Griswold rally to make it 9-8 in a nip/tuck match. In the capper, East Mills again built a six point lead early and this time never let the foot off the gas as the Tigers never got closer than five points the rest of the way.

All match long the Wolverine defense scrapped and got under shots, taking the Tigers out of their rhythm. Griswold recorded 27 kills but his just .107.

“It helps when we can get their hits up,” Blank said. “And I thought our serve was good. We had good ball control overall. We did a much better job passing the ball and serving the ball than we did the last time we played them.”

Meyer paced the Wolverines with 10 kills. Knop added nine and Moore had four. Rachel Schafer dished up 13 set assists and Dezirae Drake had 17 assists to go with five kills of her own.

Mateya Peters led the Tigers with 10 kills.

Griswold closes its season with a record of 12-19.