Changes not detering Rangers

NEW KNOXVILLE — In a season full of changes from the coronavirus pandemic to playing with only six players in the varsity lineup, the New Knoxville Rangers volleyball team has answered the call to every change and now find themselves as one of the favorites in the Midwest Athletic Conference.

The No. 4 state-ranked Rangers (11-0, 4-0 MAC) are fresh off their three-set win on Tuesday against Minster and rose in the Ohio High School Volleyball Coaches Association poll following a five-set upset of then-No. 3 Fort Loramie. The Rangers are off to the best start in program history and have the highest state ranking since 2006 when that team finished as Division IV state runnersup with Jenny Fledderjohann as head coach. Fledderjohann is now an assistant under Meg Lageman, who was a manager on that 2006 team while her older sister and two-year Rangers

head coach Morgan Strayer was a sophomore.

“We are excited about the start of our season, but we know that we still have a lot to do and our work isn’t done yet,” Jenny’s daughter Haley said.

And this team has been building for this kind of a season for quite some time.

In 2017, Ellie Gabel, Carsyn and Avery Henschen, Melisa Waterman, Haley Fledderjohann, Erica Weadock and Skylar Hough capped off their junior high volleyball careers with a perfect 38-0 record in both their seventh- and eighth-grade seasons. Three years later, all of them are on the 2020 team, minus Hough who is now a student at St. Marys City Schools and seniors Gretchen Dwenger and Morgan Leffel form a strong nucleus of players taking down the Midwest Athletic Conference one team at a time.

“Something that I think is awesome is that we had been playing vol

leyball with each other since we were very little playing backyard volleyball at each other houses and playing club volleyball,” Leffel said. “That chemistry is starting to show a lot when we play.”

In Strayer’s second season with the team, the Rangers went from 12-12 in 2017, to 15-9 in 2018 and 17-7 last year. The 2019 season was the program’s first district tournament berth since 2015 and finishing with a winning record in the MAC since 2013 and ranking as high as eighth in the Division IV state poll as the program was ready to take that next step with Lageman at the helm.

Then the pandemic arrived, halting practices and putting the 2020 season — and all the progress the New Knoxville volleyball program had been making — in doubt. But even when the season was a go, the program took changes on the fly.

Fledderjohann was pegged as the setter, but in the season opener against St. Marys, Gabel was setting the Rangers hitters up instead while Fledderjohann resumed her position from last year at libero.

“You just have to be ready at any time,” Gabel explained. “We have gone back and forth from 6-2 [rotation system], 5-1, I mean, everyone has made changes. They [the Henschen sisters] went from only being hitters to playing all the way around in the back row.

“Everyone has made sacrifices and I think that is what has led to this.”

Gabel said she had never set before this season, but she has worked at it by staying after practice to get extra reps in. The junior has logged 366 assists in 35 sets this season in 552 attempts and just 41 errors as she feeds the ball to the Rangers’ attackers, who have accumulated 425 kills so far this season.

Another change is the addition of Avery Henschen.

Henschen missed all of last season because of a torn ACL but has come back strong this year with 115 kills, second-most on the team. Before the season, Henschen said how important it was for her to play alongside her sister Carsyn for the first time in their varsity careers. Carsyn leads the team in kills with 140.

“We are opposite [sides on the court] so there is less room for argument,” Avery joked. “It’s good now that we are playing all the way around on the court at the same time, there’s a little bit of frustration on who made an error, but we do pretty well and I like having someone on the court that I like.

“Or love.” Henschen said with a smile.

“Having Avery on the court motivates me to do as good as she is doing,” Carsyn added. “I want to be able to pick her up when she is down and I know she will pick me up when I am down. Just having her back helps a lot right now.”

New Knoxville started the season 4-0 record with eventual state-ranked teams Coldwater and Versailles setting up as a true test, but the girls from The Little City swept both teams before taking down No. 8-ranked Fort Recovery last week inside the friendly confines of The Barn.

But the team faced another change with Dwenger out with an injury, forcing the team to go with just six players and while that did not seem to be a problem against the Indians, the real test would be a few days later against No. 3-ranked Fort Loramie.

Aside from the perfect record at stake, the Rangers also came into that Saturday match without dropping a set, until the Redskins took set 1.

“When we lost, I wasn’t down because we were still pretty competitive,” Avery said. “We felt like we were still in this after the second set, we just knew that we had to win the next three sets.”

“We came into the huddle after that second set and we were like, ‘well, let’s lay it out there. This is our last show so let’s give it all we’ve got,’” Gabel added.

After dropping set 2, the Rangers rallied back for a 3-2 set win over the 2019 state runnersup and left Fort Loramie with their perfect season still intact and the blemish of losing the first two sets of the season was a relief.

“It felt like a little bit of a weight lifted off our shoulders,” Leffel said. “Especially with us going to five sets, it showed us that we could go into the long rallies and get through with just six players. I feel like we got a little bit more confident that we can get through it.”

Following wins against Anna on Monday and Minster on Tuesday, the Rangers prepare for Delphos St. John’s in hopes of improving to 5-0 in the conference with just four teams left — Parkway and state-ranked St. Henry, New Bremen at home and Marion Local on the road.

“We have the goals and everyone comes into practice every day and comes into every game like we are ready, we are focused and we want to meet those goals for the year,” Leffel added.

During her junior year in basketball, Leffel had grown into a leadership role as one of the few players not a part of the class of 2022 and she said that leadership has prepared her for her senior season.

“Especially with having my other senior player, Gretchen, out, being the only senior on the floor I have to be vocal to make sure that I can help the team get motivated but also make sure that I can calm them down when it needs to be calm,” the senior said.

The girls credited Lageman and Fledderjohann for getting them prepared before each game and breaking down the game film to help the girls understand the game better.

“With all of these changes, big decisions are coming from coaches on who should be where and what we should do now. And now coaches have to go from seven players to just having six,” Avery said.

“But we just talked the other day about how well they complement each other,” Dwenger added. “They are there to remind us when we do have a big win and obviously we are excited but we are not done yet. We still have to be focused for practice the next day and we still have games to play next week.”

Lageman said it could be hard with just six players in the varsity lineup, especially if a player is struggling or needs a break but she added that there is not much choice. She has junior varsity players she can send out there but she also does not want to mess with the chemistry of the team as the Rangers continue to push for a MAC title.

“It’s good for them because they know that every game is the same,” she said. “They’re so used to playing together, they know what to do. There are pros and cons of it but it is what it is and we can’t change it. However, they are doing well with it.

“I told Jenny that we won every set in every game of three and it worries me when we go into the game of five just because they’re going to run out of gas. They’ll get tired especially against league teams. But a team like Fort Loramie, I think it was all mental toughness on Saturday and they pushed through it. It was a relief for me to see that they could finish a game into five so now they can finish every game that goes to five.”

While Lageman chuckled at her last comment, her statement rings true as the team has thrived under the ever-changing crazy season that is 2020.