D3: Royal Oak Shrine falls to Reese
Battle Creek will have to wait. Again.
After falling in the Division 3 quarterfinals a year ago, the Royal Oak Shrine Knights made it a mission to make it back to the same spot, and get a chance to move on.
But they ran into a No. 9-ranked Reese squad that — after dropping the first set handily in Tuesday’s quarters — rallied to grab the momentum, and win three straight sets to take the match, 11-25, 25-15, 25-21, 25-21, and advance to the semifinals for the first time since 2010.
“It was it was one of our goals this year. So I’m proud of them for accomplishing that. Obviously, we’re hoping to get to the next level. As a coach, especially you know, once you reach a certain milestone, you always want what’s next,” Shrine coach Annette DeMartino admitted. “So we were really hoping to get to Battle Creek, but this is the strongest team that I’ve coached here at Shrine. This is my fourth year here with them. And I just had such a solid group on the floor both defensively offensively, I have some really heavy hitters. So I think that next year will be our year. I think we might get to Battle Creek. Third time’s the charm, right?”
Instead, it’ll be the Rockets (335-1) moving on to Battle Creek, where they’ll face No. 1-ranked Muskegon Western Michigan Christian (49-5) in Friday’s noon semifinal.
“This is what this is what this is all about. So we’re gonna be ecstatic for that game and ready to play,” Reese coach Angie Compton said, admitting that her team didn’t come out of the gate like she’d expected Tuesday night.
“I … I don’t know how to explain the whole night, because we really didn’t play like ourselves at all. But I mean, this is a new level for us to be playing at, I’m sure that they were nervous. We want to get to Battle Creek — it’s not
that we don’t want to be in that final game, but we really want to get to Battle Creek. So, I feel like, when they have that pressure on them, they just don’t step up and perform … as well as we usually do. So we loosened up like we normally do. And we came out with our thing, and it was not our game, but they’re a good team. So you know, they’re not going to make it easy on us. But we that’s how I explained it.”
The Knights (27-8) did look like the more experienced team in the first set, having been to the quarterfinals a year ago.
They marched out to a 15-9 lead before Compton called her first timeout to stem the tide. Shrine would add two more points to the run before a sideout made it 17-10, but the Knights went on to score eight of the final 10 points of the set to take a 1-0 lead with what seemed at the time like ease.
“It’s super helpful. I mean, it’s the first time here there’s a ton of nerves, you don’t exactly know what to expect with the competition. You get used to your competition in your league and in your conference. So when you move on to states, then you see a ton of teams that you know, that you’ve never seen before. So it’s definitely helpful. Being here last year, I do think helped them,” DeMartino said. “It was a close game. I think that today’s game
could have went either way. And they just ended up taking it. So I’m really proud of the way that my girls hung in there. I think they did a really good job.”
The momentum wouldn’t last.
Serving much more aggressively, Reese jumped out to a 7-1 lead in the second set, stretched it to 12-4 and then to 17-8 before closing out a ten-point win in the set.
Reese jumped out to an early lead again in the third set, but Shrine tied it up by the 14-14 mark.
It was tied as late as 19-19, before the Rockets scored six of the final eight points of the set to take a 2-1 lead in the match.
Shrine led the fourth set
by as much as 13-8 before the Rockets ripped off an eight-point run on the service of Jerzie VanOchten to take a 16-13 lead.
“I think my girls just loosened up and they just did their thing. I don’t call any serve for my team.
“I know, like when Jerzie stepped up, I knew what she was gonna do. And I knew how she was gonna do it,” Compton said.
“But, to me, it’s all a feel for them, and how comfortable they are with serving the short serve at that point, or if they feel like someone on the other side of the court’s kind of not performing that well, like go at them.
“They know just as much as I do. So I trust them
and, and they, you know, they just loosened up and started serving.”
A four-point run by the Rockets got it to match point at 24-16, but the Knights put together a four-point run of their own to stave off elimination as long as they could, cutting it back to three before a hit into the net finally ended the match.
“When we got to 24 in the fourth set. I mean, yeah, but that was the first time I like took a breath,” Compton said.
“I am not gonna take any game for granted ever really in my life. So I was you know, once we got to 24 tonight, even though they went on their little run, I knew I had two timeouts I
knew they had none. I felt like I was I knew where my personnel were on the court. I felt pretty confident.”
The Knights seem to be pretty well set up to make another deep run next season.
They graduate four seniors — Ugochi Ike (8 blocks, 7 kills), Emily Sobeck, Bridget Murray (6 kills) and Elena LaChance (5 kills) — but return five juniors, two sophomores and three freshmen from Tuesday’s quarterfinals roster. Margaret Jones led the Knights with 12 kills and seven blocks, setter Georgia True had 32 assists, libero Norah Tisko had 41 digs, while Kathryn Mulcahy had 24 digs.