ATTICA — When Seneca East needed big points, it went to a familiar face, senior Haley Boes.
Boes, who finished fifth in the Northern 10 Athletic Conference in hitting, finished with 29 kills on the night as the Lady Tigers dropped Wynford in three competitive games, 25-12, 25-16 and 25-22 in the final of the Division VI sectional tournament at Seneca East Wednesday evening.
With the win, Seneca East (13-10) advances to the Shelby district tournament and will face New London (11-12) on Monday at 7:30 p.m. Wynford finished its season at 8-15.
Seneca East coach Greg Hendrix said that his team cut down on its mistakes and got more opportunities.
“So many times, we let teams get points off of our silly mistakes,” Hendrix said. “Every level we go up, we have to get that shored up more and more.
“The girls settled down and we didn’t make any mistakes down that stretch,” he added. “We had a couple of nice hits. The girls did a nice job scrapping out there. We lost our setter this morning and everything was out of whack.”
Wynford coach Tiniel Nickler said that her team prepared for Seneca East’s offensive attack.
“We knew, coming into this match, that (Boes) and (Luella Burkholder) were going to be the tough players that we had to defend. They get on top of the ball, and they get good passes from their libero and they’re able to run an offense.
“We struggled with our defense,” Nickler added. “We couldn’t get that pass to target to be able to run a really good offense. We switched our middles to outside to maybe get them a couple more swings.”
The Lady Royals led in every game, taking a 6-5 lead in game one, 7-6 in game two and 22-21 in game three on a kill from sophomore Brooke Frombaugh.
But in every game, the Lady Tigers got runs that forced the Lady Royals to play catch-up the entire night.
“We stuck with (Seneca East) in back-to-back matches,” Nickler said. “We have struggled with serve receive. We knew, this season, that we were going to have to work on serve receive; and we have worked on it. It always starts with a pass.”
In the first game, after Wynford got its 5-4 lead, Seneca East scored 10 straight points. Wynford got a kill from Gretchen Shade, before Seneca East scored 10 of the final 14 points to get the win.
In game two, the Lady Tigers broke Wynford’s 7-6 advantage, scoring six straight points before finishing the game by outscoring the Lady Royals 11-8 the rest of the way.
Frombaugh led Wynford with 11 kills while teammate Cali Holbrook added seven.
The third game was very competitive. It was back-and-forth most of the way with Wynford taking a 16-14 lead on a kill from Shade.
Seneca East responded, taking a 19-17 lead on a Boes kill, but Wynford came right back with four straight points and a 21-19 lead. Holbrook got a kill in the run.
The Lady Tigers regained control, however, scoring six of the final seven points of the match.
“We got (Wynford) out of system and with their serve receive and they were putting too many free balls over the net,” Hendrix said. “That’s a hard way to try and go. We’ve got enough firepower to put some pressure on the other team and that pretty much happened tonight.”
Nickler said that her team has been scrappy all season.
“That’s kind of the team we have been all season,” Nickler said. “We never backed down; never gave up. We kept pushing forward and kept fighting through the errors and the mistakes. We kept our heads up and were still fighting for a win.
“We have a young group of girls; we’re graduating three seniors,” Nickler added. “So, we have a lot of players coming back next year. So, the best is yet to come, and we will need to keep our heads up and moving forward. As long as we keep together, we’re going to have great results.”