BUCYRUS (Crawford County Now) — The newly aligned Northern 10 Athletic Conference ended its league season with first-time placement games for final league standings.
The two third-place teams — Old Fort from the West Division and Bucyrus from the East — faced off for overall fifth place. The state ranked Lady Stockaders held off a scrappy Lady Red, 3-0, by 25-22, 25-23, 25-19.
“They gave us a run for our money in the middle of all three sets,” Old Fort coach Erin Rau said of the Lady Red. “We kind of pulled away in the first and the third at the end.”
The Stockaders are one of three state-ranked teams in the loaded West Division — along with No. 1 Tiffin Calvert and Mohawk — making this a tall order for Bucyrus (12-9, 8-4 N10), which lost the meeting at Old Fort by the same 3-0 score.
“They’re a good team, a really good team,” Bucyrus coach Amber Christy said of the Stockaders. “We made some uncommon mistakes, but we fought every single point. They didn’t back down, quit fighting, all year long.”
The first game set the tone for the night. The Lady Red never led, but there were four ties and the biggest deficit was five points.
Bucyrus got its first lead in the second game. After trailing early, the Lady Red got the lead at 11-10 and expanded it to 15-11. Old Fort (17-5, 8-4) began chipping away to tie it at 18-18.
There were two more ties — at 22-22 and 23-23 — before the Stockaders closed it out with the last two points.
“We serve-received really good today,” Rau said. “Sometimes, that’s not the case. That’s our No. 1 weakness.
“We’re good on offense. We have a lot of hitters that can hit the ball really hard. Sometimes it’s our serve-receive and it wasn’t today, so I hope that continues for the tournament.”
The Lady Red held a four-point lead at 9-5 in the third set before the Stockaders hitting began to wear them down, reeling off six straight points and then cruising to victory.
“They’ve got some big swingers on that team, so we had some tremendous touch blocks,” Christy said. “We played hard. I’m not disappointed with the girls. We have some cleaning up to do.”
Reese Garvin had 13 kills for the Lady Red and Aubrie Kimmel added 11. Kimmel was 14 of 14 serving and freshman Bailey Doles was 13 of 13. Peyton Fackler was 27 of 33 hitting with 12 kills.
“We play three freshmen. They’re growing into their roles,” Christy said. “Everything’s different. It’s so much faster than eighth grade volleyball.”
“Marah Miller had a bunch of kills. I don’t know off the top of my head how many,” Rau said. “Adelyn (Dick), our other outside hitter ended the last set with a kill.”
Old Fort will start tournament play with a sectional final game versus Danbury on Wednesday at Gibsonburg. Bucyrus travels to Ashland Crestview on Thursday to play its sectional final against Margaretta.
“I thought we did the hard stuff today and the easy stuff we didn’t do,” Rau said.
“They’re ranked. There’s three teams in that (West) division that are ranked,” Christy said. “When you look at that, it’s a whole different story. They had to fight to beat us.”