Home |
News |
Opinion |
Sports |
Features |
Columns & Blogs |
Photography |
Milestones |
Classifieds |
Special Sections |
Obituaries |
Archive |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
03/14/2007Iron Mountain topples NorseMountaineers get past Suttons Bay in five games
Suttons Bay's Kelsey Wick returns the ball as the Norse lost in five games to Iron Mountain in a Class C state quarterfinal. KALKASKA — For all the hard hits in Tuesday's Class C quarterfinal, one of the softest and another that didn't even get over the net made all the difference in the deciding game. A tip by Brittany Newberry ended a long rally and Sasha Dixon came up with a big block as Iron Mountain became the first Upper Peninsula team to earn a trip to the Class C state semifinals with a 27-25, 25-14, 14-25, 20-25, 15-10 triumph over Suttons Bay. "This is wonderful,” Iron Mountain coach Jeanne Newberry said. "I'm absolutely giddy. That's exactly how my kids feel. "They worked so hard all year as a team. From 10 points on (in the fifth game), it was in their hearts to do it.” Speaking of heart, Suttons Bay (54-13-2) showed plenty of it after dropping the first two games. "I'm proud of my girls,” coach Mike Kelly said. "They went down 2-0 and played like champions. The last game they played their hearts out, they just got beat by the better team. "You can't get behind in a game to 15. We tried a couple of times to come back and we fell just a couple of points short. "We ended a great season with a great comeback. It just ended a little short.” Suttons Bay got the first two points of the final game on kills by sophomore middle hitter Maggie Walters. Iron Mountain (32-1) scored the next five straight in the see-saw affair. Late in the fifth game, Suttons Bay closed the gap to 10-9 and was serving. After a long rally — featuring three sprawling digs by Jessie Pavelek — Brittany Newberry found the back right corner with a tip for an 11-9 lead. "I think that took a lot of wind out of our sails,” said Suttons Bay middle hitter Kelsey Wick, the lone senior for the Norse. "We were trying so hard to keep the ball off the floor and the next thing you know it does. And they don't smack the ball down, they just tip it and you watch it fall. "It's the worst feeling in the world just watching it fall.” The Norse got as close as 12-10 before Dixon came up with a big block on the 6-foot-1 Walters, one of the few times the Mountaineers were able to stop her. "You know how frustrating that was for my No. 8 to not be able to do that and then to pull it out,” Jeanne Newberry said. "That was a big confidence builder. Sometimes the swing of a couple plays can make the difference.” Iron Mountain came out swinging effectively from the back row in the first two games, avoiding the big blocks of Walters, Wick and German exchange student Jenny Mahla. Still the Mountaineers had to hold on to win the first game as Suttons Bay rallied from a 24-22 deficit with a pair of Wick kills and two Iron Mountain hitting errors to go up 25-24. But the Mountaineers knotted the score at 25 on a Brittany Newberry kill and closed it out with a net violation and an ace by Briana Wiegele. "They hit them all in and they didn't make many (hitting) mistakes,” Kelly said. Iron Mountain dominated the second game, particularly late, to put the Norse on the brink of elimination. "Charlotte (Stowe) and I had a little bit of a pep talk,” Wick said. "We said, 'We have to go out fighting.' For my senior year, I wanted to make it back to Kalamazoo so bad and everybody had their own reasons to get to Kalamazoo.” "I knew we weren't going to lose that game before we even played it,” Suttons Bay junior setter Anna Pryor said. "Nobody on that team was ready for the season to end, especially not in three games.” From that point on Wick and Walters picked up the Norse and started swinging, wrestling the momentum away from Iron Mountain. Suttons Bay took an early 11-4 lead in the third game and never looked back in sending Iron Mountain to a fourth game for the first time this season. The Norse also controlled most of the fourth game before Iron Mountain was able to reverse the trend in the deciding fifth game. "Credit his kids,” Jeanne Newberry said. "We had some long rallies ... some hard-hitting long rallies.” "Once we got down, that team knew how to finish that game,” Prior said. Walters led Suttons Bay's offense with 34 kills to go along with two blocks and two digs. Wick added 18 kills, two digs, two assists and was 19 for 19 serving. Pryor finished with 56 assists, four digs and was 13 for 13 serving. The Norse also got key contributions from Arianna Guillen (15-16), Stowe (six kills, five digs), Fran Belanger (20-20, one ace, nine digs), Crystal Dittrich (13-13, eight digs), Krista Nesky (19 for 20, one ace) and Mahla (two kills, one block).
|
|
