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Firebirds aggressive in sweep over Greyhounds

By Travis Rosenau 5 min read

NEW ULM -- Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop's aggressive approach to Tuesday night's Tomahawk Division volleyball match with New Ulm Cathedral never wavered and it paid off with a short night.

A dominant first set set the tone for the Firebirds early as they went on to pick up a 25-9, 25-20, 25-19 sweep over the Greyhounds.

GFW was led by Kora Schwarzrock's 11 kills, 15 digs and three aces, while Ella Nachreiner had six kills and two blocks and Natalie Ahlbrecht had four kills and seven set assists. Also for GFW, Kinley Bruns had 21 digs, while Maren Kemkes had 15 set assists and Kjerssa Jasinski had three aces.

Firebirds head coach Imia Mages has wanted to see her team be more aggressive this season. She got her wish in Set 1 of Tuesday's division matchup at Cathedral High School. The Greyhounds had their share of errors in the set, but the Firebirds were relentless from the start, going up 5-0 after an ace from Chloe Henrichs. An attack error got the Greyhounds on the board, but no error was going to stop the Firebirds from continuing to put their foot on the gas.

"I was telling the girls I felt we had six girls on the floor at all times that were ready to play," Mages said. "I think tonight was a good showing of relentlessness, just pursuing the ball. If a mistake happened, we didn't dwell on it, we pushed through it. We didn't let one mistake turn into four. When you become a relentless team, you've become a tough team to beat."

The Greyhounds on the other end had the opposite happen more than once when one mistake snowballed into several back-to-back miscues.

"The problem was we would make these great plays and then all the sudden we'd go back and miss our serve, just momentum killers every single time we got a little bit of a spark," Greyhounds head coach Becky Wilfahrt said.

The Firebirds ended the first set on a 4-0 run, with two Cathedral errors, a block by Ella Nachreiner and an ace by Henrichs during that run and the ace ending the set.

Cathedral was led by Jayde Altermatt's seven kills and 16 digs, while Maddy Hazuka had four kills and seven digs, Kinley Berdan had 12 digs and five digs and Morgan Beranek had six digs and two aces. Ashlyn Hillesheim added five digs for the Greyhounds, while Thea Paszkiewicz had four digs.

The Greyhounds looked improved in the second and third sets, but they still struggled to put together enough runs to flip the script.

"We talked about just focusing on the process versus the outcome," Wilfhart said. "We get focused on the score, they get focused on the outcome. They were frazzled by how loud the fans were behind our bench, things like that. Just getting them to focus on things that they can control and that's really what we talked about."

The second set was tied up at 7-all until GFW got a 3-0 run, with a block by Ahlbrecht ending the run and forcing a Cathedral timeout. The Greyhounds got a block back out of the timeout from Leah Wilson and then turned it into a 3-0 run of their own to tie it at 10-10.

After a service error by GFW allowed the Greyhounds to tie it at 12-all, the Firebirds caught fire with a 5-0 run to lead 17-12 and prompt another Greyhounds timeout. The run was finished with back-to-back kills by Nachreiner.

Cathedral got a late 4-0 run to close the distance and trail 19-18, with an ace from Altermatt and a kill by Hazuka finishing the run and prompting a GFW timeout. An error by Cathedral out of the timeout ended the run and moments later GFW got a 4-0 run to end the set with the win.

Set 3 saw an ace by Schwarzrock give the Firebirds the early 8-3 lead. After getting within 2 after that twice, the Greyhounds had a service error that helped GFW go on a 6-0 run and lead 19-11. Schwarzrock had a pair of kills during that 6-0 run.

Cathedral closed the distance to trail by 4 after that, but a kill by Henrichs and another Cathedral error ended the set and match.

"Kora, our junior outside, has consistently been a go-to girl for us in the ups and downs of our season," Mages said. "And tonight she played a really nice, consistent game, someone that we could rely on and continue to go to to make sure we had a side out."

GFW moved to 4-11 overall and 2-5 in the Tomahawk with the win and plays at Madelia on Monday. Cathedral dropped to 3-20 overall and 1-6 in the Tomahawk and plays at Minnesota Valley Lutheran on Thursday.

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