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Wolverines stay tough for sweep

By Travis Rosenau 5 min read

ARLINGTON -- After a busy weekend hosting a tournament, the Sibley East Wolverines had little time to rest as they welcomed the Medford Tigers to their home floor Monday night.

While the Wolverines did show some of that Saturday fatigue at times, a win's a win and a sweep is extra sweet.

The Wolverines accomplished both of those things by putting the Tigers away in straight sets, winning 25-18, 25-11, 25-20 in a nonconference volleyball match at Sibley East High School.

Wolverines head coach Gabi Schwirtz said the team hasn't been able to have a lot of practice as of late after having a match last Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and then hosting a tournament Saturday, where the Wolverines went 1-4. Despite that, Schwirtz knew Monday was a good chance to get this week off on the right foot against a Medford team that fell to 0-14 on the year with the loss to the Wolverines.

"I knew they were gonna be a scrappy team, we're a very scrappy team, so I just told my girls, 'Hey, I know it's Homecoming week, I want us to have a lot of fun this week, do the little things we practiced well with on Friday,'" Schwirtz said. "We haven't had many practices last week and we won't have many this week, so I'm just like, 'Play your volleyball and we'll be good.'"

The Wolverines have a busy Homecoming week also, hosting Le Sueur-Henderson on Tuesday in South Central Conference action and then traveling to take on Maple River in another SCC match on Thursday.

The win over Medford moved the Wolverines, who defeated Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop in their home tournament Saturday, to 3-14 on the year. Medford played in the Sibley East tourney also on Saturday but didn't end up matching up with the Wolverines until their return to Arlington on Monday.

Ellie Feterl led the Wolverines with 11 kills on Monday, while Maelynn Thoele had five kills and three blocks, Karmyn Dose had five kills and Addy Odenthal had three kills. Sibley East setters Kennedy Hahn and Emma Pautz each had 12 set assists, while Olivia Kennard had 10 digs and Anahii Alvarado added two aces.

Set 1 saw Medford take a 4-0 run to lead 6-5 after a kill from Melia Schema and the Tigers pushed their lead to 9-7 before a kill from Odenthal and a block from Thoele tied it up. With Medford up 14-13, the Wolverines put together a 5-0 run to lead 18-14, with a kill from Dose ending the run. Another 5-0 run saw the Wolverines up 22-15. The Tigers burned two timeouts during that stretch but couldn't slow down the Wolverines.

Back-to-back errors moments later gave Sibley East the first set.

The Wolverines didn't take long to run away from the Tigers in Set 2, taking a 19-8 lead midway through after a 5-0 run that saw four Medford errors and an ace from Alvarado. After exchanging service errors, a 3-0 run that was finished with a kill from Feterl had the Wolverines a point away from taking a 2-0 lead in the match. A Sibley East error followed, but another kill from Feterl ended the set shortly after.

The Wolverines did benefit on a handful of Medford errors in Set 2, many off of service errors, but they were guilty of committing their share of service errors as well as both teams had six apiece in the set.

That is something, however, Schwirtz is continuing to work with her players on.

"In practice every day I'm telling them, 'We're serving hard, we're serving tough,' only because that makes our team better," Schwirtz said. "But also if I wanted to error on a serve, I'd rather us error long, and that's what they're erring on right now, so I can't really be disappointed in them because they are serving tough. Yes, I do not love missed serves, that's a momentum killer, but, yeah."

Set 3 saw the Wolverines and Tigers even nearing the midway point of the set until an ace from Grace Mullenmeister and a kill from Analynn Kniefel gave the Tigers a 13-11 lead and forced Schwirtz to take her first timeout of the night.

After trading points, the Wolverines got a 3-0 run to lead 16-14 and pushed that lead to 21-16 after kills from Thoele and Pautz. A late kill by Hadley Willmsen had the Wolverines a point away from finishing the night, but an attack error kept the Tigers alive. That didn't last long as a long serve went out of bounds to give the Wolverines the sweep.

Schwirtz said she liked how her team communicated on Monday and said a couple of players have been standing out even more as of late.

"Maelynn, she had a great weekend, she was just overall strong at the net for us, she was serving super tough," Schwirtz said. "Liv has been a great defender for us as a freshman. She's coming in and now you can really see her energy out on the court. I think the team's adjusting really well.

"On Saturday, I did a lot of different lineups, it allows me to see when we're playing someone else, a couple different things, and I just think the team is doing a great job of handling my adjustments well."

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