We meet again

BLUFFTON - Marion Local coach Anthony Chappel called it.

"We will see them again," said Chappel after his team was swept by New Bremen in early October.

His team did its part to make that a reality.

On Monday, the Flyers defeated the New Knoxville Rangers 26-24, 25-17, 15-25, 25-18 in the Division IV Bluffton District semifinal at the Sommer Center on the campus of Bluffton University. New Bremen swept rival Minster 26-24, 25-16, 25-21 in the opening game of the back-to-back, MAC vs. MAC semifinal round.

Marion and New Bremen meet again Thursday at 6 p.m. in Bluffton.

"Now we're here," Chappel said. "I'm glad that came true. I think it'll be a good matchup."

New Bremen 3, Minster 0

Minster was two points away from winning the first set.

The second-ranked Cardinals came back to take it. Soon after, it was game, set, match.

New Bremen posted a 26-24, 25-16, 25-21 of its Route 66 rival. The Cardinals didn't always look like a well-oiled machine out there, but they know how to win.

"There's a lot of experience out there for us and they know how to stay calm and collected," coach Diana Kramer said. "The coach on the sideline might want to scream and go crazy … but on the court, they know they can't change the past, we're just going to work forward to this next point and find a way to make a play."

The opening set featured eight ties. Minster's largest lead was five and New Bremen's was two. Averi Wolf sparked an 8-2 run midway through to give the Wildcats a 17-11 lead. With Claire Pape behind the service line, New Bremen caught up at 17-all, thanks in part to a series of Minster errors. The Wildcats were two points away from closing it out after Ella Mescher's wrap-around spike made it 23-21. The score was leveled at 23, however, after a Minster error and a Taylor Paul spike.

Then Macy Puthoff got involved.

A New Bremen service error briefly gave Minster back the lead, but Puthoff finished off a come-from-behind win with two blocks and a kill for three straight points.

"They had us on our heels most of that first set," Kramer said. "I'm proud of how we came back and how we finished. We made plays at the end … For whatever reason, I don't know why, my team likes to have this storyline every match: we're down, we fight our way back and find a way to finish. That's something we have to figure out."

Diana Heitkamp's ace began a 4-0 New Bremen run to start set two. The Cardinals were off and rolling from there, too. They took their first double-digit lead at 16-6. Puthoff, Josie Reinhart, Kaylee Freund, Paul and Ashton Heitkamp all got involved offensively in a 25-16 win.

"We really look at it if we could have taken that first set, it might have been a different game because we really came out flat in that second set," Minster coach Cami Garman said.

Reinhart had eight of her match-high 14 kills in the third set. Minster still hung around, though. An ace by service specialist Laney Hemmelgarn and a kill by Ivy Wolf trimmed a once six-point deficit to two at 19-17. That, however, was the closest it got. Paul collected a couple kills and Reinhart finished the job with her final spike.

"We really felt like we gave them everything they could possibly could have had in a three-set game," Garman said. "A team like Bremen, they have so many attackers and they go hard every single point. We just felt like we were on defense the whole time and couldn't get our offense going."

Paul tallied 10 kills for Bremen. Freund had four kills and five blocks, Puthoff added seven kills and 10 blocks, Pape had 36 assists and Diana Heitkamp contributed 17 digs.

Averi Wolf had a team-high seven kills for Minster. Ivy Wolf added five kills. Emily Stubbs picked up 21 digs and Kaitlyn Wolf dished out 18 assists for the Wildcats, who finished the regular season 19th in the state poll.
Marion 3, New Knoxville 1

New Knoxville defeated Marion 3-1 at the end of the regular season.

The script was a flipped on Monday in another meeting between state-ranked teams.

The Rangers were voted eighth in the final state poll. The Flyers were 11th. Chappel said his group just had better execution all around in the rematch.

"The girls did a great job tonight," he said. "Players win games. You can only set up as much as you want as a coach, and my assistant coaches put endless hours into it. Every single player across the board just stepped up."

Four different Flyers had kills early in the opening set as they jumped out to an 11-6 advantage. New Knoxville's Carsyn Henschen had four of her set-high five kills in the early going, including three of them during a 6-1 run which tied it up at 12-apiece. The set was tied at 19 and 21. The Rangers had set point at 24-23 after a Morgan Leffel kill, one of her four in the set. A Brooke Homan spike kept Marion alive, though, and Kelsey Koenig's ace later clinched it for the Flyers.

Kinsey Thobe had four kills and Brooke Homan added three in leading Marion out to a 16-9 start in set two. From there, the margin never got closer than five points. Thobe and Homan each finished the set with five kills in a 25-17 win.

Marion and New Knoxville played to six ties in the third set, the last of which came 9-all. The Rangers then started to run away. Henschen had a pair of kills and an ace during a run which saw New Knoxville take a 20-12 lead. An Ellie Gabel ace finished the set in Knoxville's favor, 25-15.

A combined 12 errors were made between the teams through the first 20 points of the fourth set, with Marion claiming an 11-9 lead. Carly Fledderjohann made it a one-point set with back-to-back aces, but Alana Pohlman followed with a pair of kills, Thobe added another and Marion's lead was stretched to 15-10. Homan, Abby Bruns and Nicole Franck added kills down the stretch to send Marion to the district final.

"I think we really get affected when the pressure is on," New Knoxville coach Morgan Stayer said. "In a tournament game like this, in a new gym, a big gym, I feel like we really just didn't rise to the occasion. A lot of our girls are young. Our two outsides are sophomores. I told them to just learn from the game and use it for the future. … And overall we had a really good season. I told them I really don't even want to focus on the negatives. If it was the middle of the season we could, but they really should be proud of their season."

Homan had a game-high 13 kills for Marion Local. Other stat leaders were Thobe (12 kills, nine digs), Lydia Griesdorn (12 digs), Pohlman (seven kills, five blocks), Heidi Rethman (36 assists, 14 digs, four blocks), Koenig (11 digs) and Bruns (eight kills, six blocks).

Now it's on to face New Bremen for Chappel and crew. The Cardinals had 16 service aces in a 25-17, 25-17, 25-15 sweep of Marion Local on Oct. 3.

"We know what we wanted to do the first time," Chappel said. "Serve receiving was the big thing. Now we've got a couple more weeks of that dialed in and have been a lot more focused in on that. The girls are ready to go."