Starting the right way: Broncos hold off Maroons in season-opener
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MENOMINEE -- The Menominee volleyball team turned what looked to be an easy 3-0 sweep for Bark River-Harris into a five-game nail-biter at Menominee High School on Tuesday night.
BR-H controlled everything about the first two games against the young and inexperienced Maroons, taking them handily before Menominee woke up and stole games three and four to force a decisive Game 5 up to 15. Unfortunately for the Maroons, the Broncos experience was too much to handle as BR-H won the finale for a 3-2 match win.
"I have a team full of juniors that have never played varsity volleyball before and they didn't really know what to expect tonight. Some didn't even know this was a five-game series," Menominee coach Sarah Betzinger laughed. "Those first two games it was obvious how nervous they were out there, but after that they realized it couldn't get much worse from there and they came out, started talking more and moving around and played much better in the third and fourth game."
In the first game, Menominee was able to stay close in the beginning and pulled within two at 10-8 on an ace from Laura Magrane, but BR-H went on a brief run and led 14-9 when Carley Varoni stepped to the serve line. Varoni rattled off nine straight points including four aces to hike the lead to 23-9 before a serve into the net gave Menominee possession trailing 23-10. Two serves and two Broncos' points later, BR-H took Game 1 25-10.
Game 2 was much of the same as BR-H took control early on and never let up, taking a 20-4 lead after Selena Britton served for 10 straight points -- eight coming on aces. In total, the Broncos had 11 aces in the second game and eventually won 25-6.
"I thought we played really well in games one and two," BR-H coach Jennifer Ives said. "I feel like we could have picked up our tempo, but we pulled out two pretty decisive wins there thanks to some really good serving by everyone."
BR-H jumped out to a 10-4 lead in the third game and things were looking bleak for Menominee, but the Maroons never gave up and started chipping away at the lead until the game was knotted up at 13 thanks to an ace from Kayla Drifka.
After the teams traded points, Menominee took its first lead of the game at 16-15, and with Lani Holmes doing the serving the Maroons were able to stretch their lead to 20-15, but the Broncos stormed back with three straight points to get back within two (20-18).
With the Maroons leading 24-21, a wide-kill attempt gave BR-H the serve back with the score at 24-22, and this time it was the Broncos who came back to tie things up at 24 and force Menominee into a timeout to talk things over.
Out of the timeout, a BR-H kill into the net and an ace from Drifka gave Menominee a 26-24 victory.
In Game 4, it was Menominee who took control early, jumping out to a 6-0 lead thanks to three aces from Drifka. The Maroons made some mistakes to give the serve back to BR-H, but the Broncos frustrations from Game 3 spilled over into the fourth and Menominee was able to take a commanding 20-6 lead before BR-H woke up and started mounting a comeback.
Slowly but surely, the Broncos made their way back into the game, but the closest they could come was a seven-point deficit as Menominee took Game 4 25-17 to force the deciding fifth game.
In the final game, the nerves started to come back on the junior-filled Menominee team and BR-H's experience guided them along to jump out to an early 7-2 lead and eventually win Game 5 15-3 to seal the victory.
"Even though we weren't able to pull out the win I'm still very happy and proud what the girls showed tonight," Betzinger said. "They have never played in a varsity game before and they were able to stick together and come back to force five games when it looked like we would be getting out of here early. We're only going to get better from here and most of what I saw today was promising."