Cardinals work their way past Wildcats

MINSTER - New Bremen volleyball coach Diana Kramer experienced her first match of the Minster-New Bremen rivalry on Tuesday night and came away on the happy end of a three-set sweep of the Wildcats at Wildcat Gymnasium.

"Every game was competitive. I never experienced the Minster-New Bremen rivalry before," said Kramer, who took over at New Bremen this season after having coached at St. Henry the past several years. "They're well-coached, have a lot of experience and wanted it as much as we did."

The 25-17, 25-14, 25-23 Cardinals win didn't quite tell the whole story as the teams battled back and forth in all three sets with New Bremen getting enough of a cushion to hold on.

Minster knew it would have to battle the hard-spiking of Cardinals junior Paige Jones, who entered the evening averaging nine kills per set.

"I thought we did a nice job defending her," Minster coach Cami Garman said. "I would have liked to see us do a better job on her roll shots and tip shots. We were kind of timid. We expected her to attack, attack, attack. We did a good job of defending her attack."

Even with Jones recording 11 kills in the opening set, the teams were tied 10 times during the match and the lead changed four times.. The turning point came with Minster holding a 16-15 lead only to have Jones get the kill for the sideout. Jones added three more kills during Julia Gottemoeller's service run to go up 21-17. Madison Pape served up the final three points of the night.

Jones got the serve to start the second set and aced her first two attempts. Rachel Kremer added a block as part of a 4-0 start. Minster was unable to get on track as all but one of New Bremen's service rotations accounted for a point.

Needing a win to keep the match going, Minster started the third set strong. A kill by Rosie Westerbeck and a block from Paige Thobe gave the Wildcats a 3-1 start to the set. The Cardinals came back with an ace by Macy Puthoff and a kill by Kremer. For the next few rounds of rotations, the Wildcats enjoyed a lead only to have the Cardinals come back and knot the score. Finally the Cardinals got a break during the service run of Paige Purdy. Carly Barhorst had a kill and a long spike out of bounds put Minster up 18-14. Another Cardinal hitting error later made it 19-15. New Bremen snapped back into form as Jones tallied a kill to get the sideout at 19-16. Kremer followed with four straight points, three on Minster hitting errors, to go from being down three to up 20-19. A serve into the net tied the game at 20-20 and the teams tied at 21- and 22-all, but Jones broke the tie with a kill and then served up an ace to make it match point at 24-22. A hitting error by the Cardinals staved off the end for another serve, but Jones closed out the match with a kill to end it.

"The key to this game was serving and serve-receive," Kramer said. "We struggled at the start (of the third set) They got us out of system a little bit.

"But the thing that I love about my team is we were able to fight and come back. They're finally believing we can win every single game that we play.

"I told the girls that I didn't think we made a lot of errors tonight," Garman said. "I thought we played a clean game, but we had a lot of missed opportunities."

Jones, who went over the 1,000-career kill mark in her career, finished with 25 kills, six aces and two blocks. Kremer added four kills.

Jordyn Heitbrink had seven kills for Minster. Barhorst and Thobe each had six kills.

Both teams are back in MAC play on Thursday. New Bremen heads to Cardinal Gymnasium to play host to another neighboring rival in New Knoxville. Minster travels to Darke County to face Versailles.