Cavs shine in clutch

COLDWATER - The Celina volleyball team responded to its first loss with three straight sweeps.

Responding to its second loss proved a bit more difficult.

The Bulldogs squandered late leads in the first two sets and watched Coldwater pull away in a hard-fought third as the Cavaliers earned a 26-24, 25-23, 25-21 win at the Palace to send Celina to its second straight loss.

"Those are just crucial times," Celina coach Phil Bange said. "It's a mental toughness thing, it's a who-wants-it-more kind of thing, and they played really well when they needed to. We just didn't rise to the occasion."

Celina (12-3) led 4-1 in the decisive third set before Coldwater (14-2) tied the score at 5 and the back-and-forth began. The two teams tied six more times with three lead changes in the next 18 points, with the margin never getting beyond two either way.

Finally, after a kill by Jenna Leugers gave the Cavaliers the serve, Kadance Blockberger rattled off four straight points, including a pair of Celina errors, to open up a narrow lead. Blockberger hit a serve left and long to stop the run, but the Bulldogs' serve went into the net and Leugers picked up the slack, serving up back-to-back aces in a four-point run that stretched the lead to 20-15.

Trailing 23-16, Celina made one last run after Peyton Bertke got a block to stop the Cavaliers' momentum. A pair of Coldwater errors and a block by Brooklyn Bourne made it 23-20 before Kendra Clune sent a shot back to the Celina side, where two Bulldogs attempted diving saves only to send the ball sailing over the scorers' table. Bertke tipped a shot for a kill to stave off defeat, but Coldwater's Riley Rismiller finished it off by blocking a shot by Evie Holstad straight to the floor.

"In our match against New Bremen, we needed just two points," Coldwater coach Nikki Etzler said. "It was a two-point difference, and so I'm proud of the girls because they ended up finding those two points (tonight) and really grinded through it."

Celina had a chance to get a win in the opening set, jumping out to an 8-2 advantage and leading 20-14 before the Cavaliers responded. Morgan Blasingame served up five straight points to cut the lead to 20-19 and Annelise Harlamert stepped up with four more after the Bulldogs went ahead 23-20. Spencer Etzler got a kill and a block, followed by a block by Clune and an ace by Harlamert to give Coldwater set point.

Bourne fired a shot off the Cavaliers' block to tie it up, but a Bulldogs hitting error gave Coldwater another chance and Rismiller finished off a long point with a tip shot from the right side.

"We love to serve aggressive, we love to spot serve, so we just made sure we weren't giving them advantages that we had given them in the beginning," coach Etzler said. "Sometimes we were like their best player because we made a lot of errors, so we had to control the runs of that."

The Bulldogs were sluggish at the opening of the second set, with the Cavaliers jumping out to a 14-7 lead before Celina got going. The Bulldogs rattled off a 9-2 run, highlighted by a seven-point service run by Allison Schwieterman and a pair of kills by Holstad, to go ahead 19-18. Coldwater scored the next four of the next five to retake the lead and Celina responded with three of its own, punctuated by a block by Bourne and Lutz to put the Bulldogs up 23-22.

That was the high-water mark for Celina. Leugers hit a soft shot from the left side that fell on the Celina side, the Bulldogs failed to return the next serve, and Leugers fired a shot down the left boundary that caromed off Schwieterman and out of play to end the set.

"A lot of it was just cutting down on our errors, and they started making some errors that allowed us to get back into it," Bange said. "But they're too good of a team. They don't stay down for long, so they turned it on again and got it back together."

Leugers finished with a match-high 10 kills and 14 digs, with Clune recording four blocks and Rismiller adding three. Harlamert finished with 24 assists.

Holstad led the Bulldogs with nine kills, while Bertke added 26 assists and Summer Wilson finished with 25 digs. Schwieterman notched three aces.

All three of Celina's losses have come to Midwest Athletic Conference teams, starting with Minster on Sept. 11 and then against St. Henry on Saturday. The Bulldogs have three wins against MAC teams after beating Marion Local, Parkway and Fort Recovery.

Celina will look to make corrections in time for a crucial Western Buckeye League match at state-ranked Ottawa-Glandorf, as the two teams come in tied at 5-0 atop the WBL.

"Their gym will be rocking and rolling, so a lot of it will be getting our confidence," Bange said. "We talked about playing as a team, being joyful as a team, and keeping momentum. There were times we were just down tonight."

Coldwater gets a chance to extend its winning streak to three at Fort Recovery on Thursday.