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New Bremen volleyball players celebrate with coach Diana Kramer, center, after the team won its second straight Division IV state championship by beating Tiffin Calvert on Saturday night at the Ervin J. Nutter Center on the campus of Wright State University.
FAIRBORN - New Bremen has had the opportunity to win back-to-back state volleyball titles twice before, in 2018 and 2020. Both times, it finished as runner-up to Tiffin Calvert.
On Saturday, the 2023 Cardinals got it done, and they did it by beating the Senecas.
New Bremen surrendered late runs in each of the first three sets, but it held on to win two of them and came away with a 25-22, 26-28, 25-22, 25-16 victory over Tiffin Calvert in the Division IV state championship game at the Ervin J. Nutter Center at Wright State.
"It just hasn't set in for me," junior Keira Steininger said. "Going to the top is one thing, but staying on top for another year is a whole different level."
Tiffin Calvert (27-2) won its first state title in five sets in 2018 and won its second in four sets in 2020, when the state championship was held at Vandalia-Butler.
This year marked just the third trip to the state tournament for the Senecas, and every time has ended with a matchup against the Cardinals.
"I just thought they seemed a little more mature," Calvert coach Lori Rombach said, on this year's Cardinals team. "When we played them in '18 and in '20, I think we were a little more successful in our runs with them. They didn't have as many slumps, I think, as I had seen in past years. And they seemed a little bit more balanced, if I'm being honest, too."
Coming in, Calvert had lost just five sets all year, two to Division I state semifinalist St. Ursula and three to Division I's Rocky River Magnificat. But it took the lead just six times over four sets on Saturday.
After trading points to 3-3 of the first set, New Bremen took the lead for good when Ava Trentman sent a shot around the block for a first-ball sideout. A setting error off the serve receive made it 5-3, Amelia Dammeyer added a kill inside the back line, and two violations by the Senecas put the Cardinals up by five before a serve into the net stopped the run.
New Bremen's Amelia Dammeyer passes the ball as libero Keira Steininger looks on.
"Was this Calvert volleyball's best performance today? No, it was not," Rombach said. "I think there were certain parts of the game that we didn't do our best on. We struggled on serve receive, and when you work backwards, if you're not getting that first pass up there, it has an effect on everything else from that."
The Senecas got within two twice more before three-point runs by April Baker and Steininger, each serving an ace, helped New Bremen go up by seven. Four more Calvert put the Cardinals in commanding position with a 22-13 advantage.
Alli Porter hit a kill off the block to give Calvert the serve back, Emily Miller served an ace, and Caroline Lanicek got a block and a kill before Miller's serve just barely missed the right line to give Baker the serve 23-17. But Baker's serve went long, as did Amelia Dammeyer's next shot.
Olivia Miller got an ace, and after Mary Rindler got a kill to give the Cardinals set point, they committed two more hitting errors to bring the Senecas within two.
New Bremen's Olivia Heitkamp fires a shot down the line past Tiffin Calvert blocker Bryn Meyer on Saturday.
Heitkamp made the critical play, firing a shot that Claire Schoenberger couldn't save, and New Bremen escaped with a 1-0 match lead.
The second set was the tightest, featuring 11 ties and four lead changes. The Cardinals trailed 9-6 before tying it at 10, and after Amelia Dammeyer staked them to a 14-10 lead, Schoenberger served up four points to tie it again.
New Bremen pulled ahead 20-17, but Lanicek got two kills and Cecilia Palm fired an ace to make it 21-20 Calvert. A hitting error by the Senecas, a kill by Heitkamp and a double-hit gave the Cardinals a 24-22 lead, but they handed it right back with a service error and a double-hit.
Melina Schrader got two kills with Calvert at set point, but finally Porter got a kill to make it 27-26 and Heitkamp fired a shot out of bounds to tie up the match.
"That's what state championship volleyball is all about," Rombach said. "I wish every set would have been like that. To go back and forth 22-22, 23-22, that's great. You want your kids to be able to have that pressure and be able to terminate. It was fantastic."
Rombach noted that as they made changes to try to get the offense going in the second set, the Senecas ran out of subs, and Bryn Meyer served the final point after she hadn't served all season.
New Bremen responded in the third and never trailed. Heitkamp got back-to-back kills, Schrader notched an ace and Trentman got a block and a kill in a 6-1 run to put the Cardinals in control.
New Bremen's Alivia Dammeyer (3) celebrates a point in the fourth set with Melina Schrader (1), Ava Trentman (11), Keira Steininger (0) and Amelia Dammeyer (right) in the Division IV state championship game at the Ervin J. Nutter Center at Wright State University on Saturday.
They stretched the lead to seven twice and were up 23-17 before Calvert made another run. Lanicek started it off with a kill, New Bremen committed two hitting errors, and Porter got a kill before Lanicek blocked a tip shot by Heitkamp to draw the Senecas within one.
But Heitkamp and Steininger let Schoenberger's next serve go just over the back line to give New Bremen set point. Heitkamp got a shot past Palm to get within a set of the state title.
In the fourth, Calvert led 2-1, but the Cardinals took over from there and never trailed again.
"The thing that really sticks out is that second set," New Bremen coach Diana Kramer said. "A lot of teams will crumble. We had the lead the whole second set, we had set point. Calvert's phenomenal, Calvert's a great team. They found a way to put pressure on us, we made a few mistakes, they earned a couple points, and all of a sudden it's a brand new ballgame. Instead of being up 2-0, we're 1-1.
"This team found a way to look each other in the eye and say, 'This is our day,'" she went on. " 'This is about us - not what they're doing, what we do. If we play New Bremen volleyball, good things will happen.' They played with confidence, they played with swag, they played with grit."
A net violation gave them the lead for good at 7-6. Calvert got back within one at 8-7 before Amelia Dammeyer got a kill through the block to send Sarah Dwenger to the service line, where she rattled off seven points.
New Bremen's Ava Trentman celebrates with Sarah Dwenger (10) as Dwenger returns to the bench after a service run.
Dwenger and Baker, the Cardinals' fifth and sixth servers, combined for 24 service points, and Kramer said she'd huddled with them before the game.
"I talked about, 'We need to score points in your rotations,' " she said. " 'And if you do not, these two girls' - there were two more girls in the huddle - 'these two girls will come in and do that job.' This is a team, we're here to win it, and I wanted everybody to be on the same page. And Sarah, in the fourth set, came in and served (seven) points in a row and broke that tie wide open.
"Some kids can't handle that adversity, some kids can't handle that pressure," she went on. "Those two kids stepped up in the moment, just like every single one of these girls."
Dwenger fired an ace to make it 12-7, and Alivia Dammeyer followed with three straight kills: one off the block, another to the back middle out of Palm's reach, and a tip between two diving defenders.
Kramer said that Alivia Dammeyer bounced between the front and back row throughout the season and only earned the hitting spot for good about a month ago.
"It's just about getting momentum," Alivia Dammeyer said of her fourth-set run. "Once I got one and she set me again, I just kept going. You just gain momentum, and it definitely helps when the crowd joins in and your teammates are there for you."
New Bremen then committed four errors, and Schoenberger added an ace in a four-point run that cut the lead to two at 18-16. But Heitkamp answered with three straight kills and a block, and after the Cardinals had struggled to close out late leads in the first three sets, Steininger served up the last six points to finish off the state title.
Trentman drilled a shot through the block to make it 23-16, and Heitkamp hit two more kills, the second deflecting off the side of Lanicek's hand and spinning left before falling for the final point.
"I kind of knew they were going to come at me," Heitkamp said. "I've got to know that and just move forward to the next play. If I make a mistake or they block me, I've just got to move on."
"She was intentionally going thumb down around the block, thumb up around the block, getting people out of position," Kramer added.
Four Cardinals finished with double-digit digs - Steininger (19), Amelia Dammeyer (17), Alivia Dammeyer (16) and Heitkamp (14).
New Bremen's Melina Schrader sets up a teammate during Saturday's Division IV state volleyball championship match at Wright State University.
Schrader, who hurt her ankle in the semifinals on Friday, finished with 40 assists, and she admitted that she was feeling some pain throughout the match.
"The first set was definitely a struggle, but I took some medicine, and throughout the second and third it felt a little better," she said. "It was definitely a struggle, though. At moments it would tighten up again, but overall it was pretty good. I was more focused on the game."
"That setter is ridiculous," was Rombach's assessment.
In 2020, when New Bremen last met Calvert in the state championship game, Heitkamp had six kills and two blocks and Amelia Dammeyer had an ace, with both coming off the bench in all four sets as freshmen. Lanicek started for the Senecas and had 12 kills and six blocks, while Camryn Shook had six kills.
On Saturday, Heitkamp racked up 20 kills and Amelia Dammeyer added 10. Lanicek recorded 13 kills and four blocks, and Shook had 10 kills.
The three seniors, the Dammeyers and Heitkamp, finished their careers with a record of 102-10.
"They're chippy," Kramer said on how she would describe her team, drawing a laugh from Schrader. "They play with energy, they play with attitudes and demeanor. I don't mean that in any disrespectful way, but they are businesslike. That's probably how I would describe them the most."
