UPPER SANDUSKY — For the second year in a row, Bucyrus and Upper Sandusky split in their two Northern 10 Athletic Conference contests.
For the second consecutive year, they met in the Division III sectional semifinal. To the chagrin of the Lady Redmen, history repeated itself at Upper Sandusky High School Monday evening.
The Lady Rams rallied from a first-set loss and a third-set deficit to defeat the visitors, 3-1.
With the win, Upper Sandusky (7-16) advances to the Division III sectional final at No. 1 see Huron on Wednesday.
“When we hit, we can hit and we can score,” Upper Sandusky coach Danielle Crall said. “They just have to believe in themselves. Finally, they did it tonight. My hitters decided they wanted to swing and put the ball away and that’s just what we did.”
Bucyrus (7-16) took control early. After trailing 5-1 to start the first set, the Lady Red rolled to a 25-18 win. The second set was nip and tuck most of the way until the Rams took the last five points to win, 25-19, to tie the match at 1-1.
The third set was the momentum swinger in the match. Bucyrus seemed headed for a 2-1 advantage after going on a 13-6 run to take a 21-14 lead.
But Upper Sandusky flipped the script, finishing on a 13-4 run, to steal the third set, 27-25, and took the 2-1 lead.
“We made errors and Upper Sandusky didn’t,” Bucyrus coach Amber Christy said. “They clearly worked the court a lot better than what we did. We just gave it (up). It seems like our girls, come third set, they always tire out and that’s exactly what happened tonight.”
“Sometimes, we get a little too focused and too serious and then we don’t play our best,” Crall said. “We play more when we’re having some fun. We finally did that, and I think that’s what sparked our big run.”
In the fourth set, Lady Red stayed close early, trailing just 5-4. But the Rams went on a 7-0 run to stretch their lead to 12-4 and Bucyrus was never able to get closer than six, which happened at 20-14. Upper Sandusky closed out the match from there to win the deciding set, 25-16.
Both coaches thought the Rams’ court awareness was a big difference in the outcome.
“Our block has not been huge or strong,” Christy said. “We don’t have huge block numbers. They got us. They pushed the ball all over the court and beat us on the tip. That’s what they did the first time we played them (a Rams’ sweep). Last week when we played them the second time (a Lady Red sweep), we controlled the tip. They couldn’t get a tip in. We covered the tips and beat them.”
“We watched a lot of film this weekend,” Crall said. “I talked about we’ve got to see those openings. I thought our front row did a really good job. Addy Newman talked a lot tonight to our hitters, telling them where the open spots were, and it really worked out in our favor tonight.”
Layla Ellis led the Lady Red attack with 33 digs, 16 receptions, and was 8 for 8 serving with one ace. Ellis establishes a school record with 1191 digs.
Addy Ricker had 33 assists to set another school record at 1209. She passed Jordy Whitmore-Graves in the second set. Ricker was 22 of 23 serving with three aces and 15 digs.
Emma Tyrrell had 24 kills, one solo and one assisted block. Freshmen Aubrie Kimmel and Haylee Stratton had 12 and 10 kills, respectively.
Christy will say good-bye to five seniors in Ellis, Ricker, Tyrrell, Lily Neumann, and Addison Kemery.
“They’ll be greatly missed,” Christy said. “Clearly, Layla’s in the top five in the state in digs. It’s going to be really, really tough to replace her. Emma’s a great hitter, Ricker is our setter, and Lily plays all the way around. Then we have Addison. She just started playing this year. I have a really good group of seniors.”
“That’s what we talked about after the first set, where our block was,” Crall said. “Emma (Tyrrell) and Lily Neumann really were kind of our focus points. They’re the ones who are going to put the ball away the most, so that’s where we’re going to have to try to settle on. I think my girls did a really good job of finding them, finding where the ball was, and stopping it as much as we could.”
Christy summed up the loss succinctly.
“It’s just uncharacteristic mistakes that we made that we can’t make in order to win,” Christy said.
Still, she felt empathy, especially for the departing seniors.
“I said it was going to be a battle and whoever played harder wins the game,” Christy said. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t us tonight.
“I’m sad for (the seniors) that they got beat,” she added. “But they were on the court, and it happens. That’s volleyball, that’s the game.”
Upper Sandusky braces for the sectional final against top-ranked Huron.
“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” Crall said. “But it’s tournament time. Anything’s possible, so we’ve just got to go in there and kind of believe we can hopefully pull off an upset.”