Staff photo by Travis Rosenau New Ulm Cathedral’s Shay Wilfahrt tries to hit the ball past the block of Wabasso’s Camryn Irlbeck (10) and Alivia Olson (8) during a Tomahawk-Valley Conference, Tomahawk Division volleyball match on Thursday at Cathedral High School.

NEW ULM — If one thing’s for sure about volleyball in the Tomahawk-Valley Conference this year, it’s that there won’t be a lack of aggressiveness shown by the defending Tomahawk Conference champion Wabasso Rabbits.

New Ulm Cathedral Greyhounds challenged the Rabbits in the third set of Thursday night’s Tomahawk-Valley Conference, Tomahawk Division matchup, but the Rabbits’ early firepower lifted them to a 25-7, 25-15, 25-22 sweep.

Alivia Olson led the Rabbits with eight kills, four aces and a block, while Carly Fenger had seven kills and three total blocks and Leah Mathiowetz had five kills and six ace serves. Sara Carlson had 27 set assists and two aces also for the Rabbits, while Audrey Johnson had 12 digs.

“One thing that I really like about our team is that everybody can contribute,” Wabasso head coach Barb Johnson said. “When I put in a substitute, they just fit right in and they play really well and they all play really hard, so that’s really nice. If things aren’t going quite right or if you just want to get somebody in, that they can just go with the flow and it’s great.

“The girls came out the first two games on fire, so that was really fun to see, first conference game of the year. And Cathedral’s a good team, too, so I was really happy to see that.”

Cathedral was led by Shay Wilfahrt’s seven kills, eight digs and two blocks, while Madelyn Haala had 13 set assists and eight digs.

“I think they ran a faster-paced offense, which maybe it was a little bit harder for some of our defenders to catch up with in the first couple sets,” Cathedral head coach Becky Wilfahrt said. “I think maybe that was a part of it. We just fundamentally did a lot of things wrong.

“We didn’t control the ball on our side of the net, our serve-receive passing, even our serving, we usually get a lot more ace serves, we missed a lot of serves, I think we only picked up two ace serves going. We just could never get our offense going and it’s hard to score points when you can’t get it going.”

The Rabbits jumped out to a 10-3 lead in Set 1 after back-to-back kills from Mathiowetz to prompt a Cathedral timeout. Wabasso got another 4 points out of the timeout for a 10-0 run and 14-3 lead before a service error ended the run.

Cathedral was limited to two kills the rest of the set, one from Ava Krueger and one from Abbey Hillesheim, while the Rabbits put together a 5-0 run to end the set, finished with a kill from Camryn Irlbeck.

A 5-0 Wabasso run midway through the second let put the Rabbit up 14-6 before a kill from Krueger ended the run. Wabasso got a 4-0 run moments later to lead 18-9 and force a Cathedral timeout. The Rabbits ended up ending the set on a 5-2 run, with the set point coming on a kill by Fenger.

Wabasso opened the third set with a 4-0 lead, getting kills from three different players — Olivia Wall, Fenger and Johnson — and an ace serve by Johnson.

The Greyhounds came to life after that and got kills from Hillesheim and Krueger to trail 10-8. After a Shay Wilfahrt kill, a Wabasso attack error and an ace serve by Haala, the Greyhounds took their first lead of the night at 14-13. After a double block at the net by Cathedral put the Greyhounds up 17-16, Wabasso took its first timeout of the night.

Coach Johnson said her team lost focus a bit in the third set and gave away some points as a result.

“Our team has a lot of personality and it takes a lot to wrangle them in and focus and all that and sometimes they just lose their focus,” coach Johnson said. “That’s all it is.”

The Rabbits were forced to regain that focus in a hurry out of the timeout and managed to do so.

The score remained close until Shay Wilfahrt’s kill to tie it at 21-all was matched with a kill by Alivia Olson that gave the Rabbits the lead for good.

Despite giving away some points in the third set, coach Johnson complimented Cathedral for bouncing back after the first two sets.

“They hit with a lot more confidence and they passed better that [third] game, which allowed them to play better,” coach Johnson said. “And they were finding spots on the floor that earlier sets we had covered, and they just did a really good job of staying in the game.”

While it wasn’t a pretty first two sets for the Greyhounds, they were still able to challenge a team ranked ninth in the state in Class A in the third set.

“I think if we would have started how we ended, it would have been a very different night,” coach Wilfahrt said. “It definitely wouldn’t have been probably a quick 3-0, three-and-0 out. You get some blocks, it builds confidence, you get some blocks early in that third set. We got them out of system a little bit with some of our serving and we finally got some good hits, but hadn’t had some really good setups up to that point, so it was hard to get those swings.”

Wabasso (3-0, 1-0) plays at a tournament in Montevideo on Saturday, while Cathedral (2-2, 0-1) hits the road for a Saturday tournament at Waterville-Elysian-Morristown High School.