Staff photo by Travis Rosenau Wabasso’s Allison Fenger spikes the ball past Sleepy Eye St. Marys’ Sydney Windschitl (2) and Madison Mathiowetz (3) on Thursday night in a Tomahawk Conference volleyball match at St. Mary’s High School.

SLEEPY EYE — Trailing two sets to none against Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s on Thursday night, Wabasso needed a big swing in a hurry.

Led by seniors Cora Eichten and Allison Fenger, the Rabbits got that swing and picked up an 18-25, 12-25, 25-17, 25-15, 15-12 win in Tomahawk Conference volleyball action.

Cora Eichten led the Rabbits with 20 kills and 26 digs, while Allison Fenger added 10 kills, seven ace serves and two blocks. Also for the Rabbits, Halle Huhnerkoch had eight kills, four ace serves and 25 digs, while Avery Carlson had 23 digs, 20 set assists and five ace serves, Bella Brand had 34 digs and Kelsey Frank had 20 set assists.

The Knights were led by Madison Mathiowetz, who had 12 kills, 16 set assists and eight digs. Sydney Windschitl also had 26 digs, six kills and three ace serves for the Knights, while Trista Ibberson had 13 digs, three kills and an ace serve.

While neither team was able to gain much ground on each other in the third set, Wabasso put together a late 6-0 run to lead 22-15 and force a Knights timeout. The run featured a pair of kills by Huhnerkoch and a kill by Fenger.

Eichten got the set point shortly after on a spike past a pair of St. Mary’s defenders.

The Rabbits kept that momentum going in the fourth set and jumped out to an early 6-1 lead after an ace serve by Huhnerkoch. The Rabbits got a 7-2 run in the middle of the set to jump out to an 18-7 lead, being led by a pair of Fenger kills and an ace serve from Brand.

The Knights were shaken up by the run and the Rabbits continued to roll on the way to a fourth-set win.

Both squads stayed on each other in the early going of the final set, with a kill by Eichten being answered right away with a kill by Mathiowetz to tie things at 5-all. A big block by Fenger gave the Rabbits some breathing room and a 10-7 lead.

Fenger then added a pair of late kills in the fifth set and the Rabbits forced a Knights error for the match point.

The Rabbits were hungry for a win after losing their previous six matches, and a will to win and better communication after the second set helped them battle back.

“I feel like sometimes we have a trouble talking,” Fenger said. “So changing how much we talk, working together and making sure we trust each other if somebody’s behind you … I think talking was a big thing. I also think the motivation was there after we realized that we want this and kind of need this, we don’t want to let ourselves down.”

The Knights looked to be well on their way to a win in the first two sets, with the second set looking like the Knights were bound for a sweep win. The Knights got a 4-0 run in the middle of the second set to lead 17-8 and later got a 5-0 run to lead 24-11 before going up 2-0 after a set-point kill by Windschitl.

Knights head coach Jen Walter said that while she liked her team’s aggressive serving in the first two sets, the team got timid in the final three sets and let errors take over.

“It was a little bit of miscommunication, and this is now the third [match] we’ve dropped in the fifth set,” she said. “We put ourselves in these situations, and it’s just that mentality of playing to win, that kind of cliché, kind of attitude. We get really tight and we make, to me, mental errors — like free-ball passes that we’re shanking or hits that we’re hitting long, things that we can do better.”

Wabasso (4-8, 2-0) next plays at the Burnsville Invitational on Friday, while St. Mary’s (8-7, 1-2) is at Sleepy Eye Public for a 7 p.m. conference meeting Tuesday.