West Noble Charges Past WawaseeNAPPANEE – West Noble had a one-two punch that Wawasee could not overcome in the Lady Chargers’ 25-18, 25-13, 25-20 volleyball victory over the Lady Warriors in the opening round of the 3A NorthWood Sectional Thursday night.
Lady Charger sophomore Kristina Teel played the role of distributor, finishing with 29 assists in the match. Throughout the match she found outside hitter Madison Schermerhorn, but more often than not the hole was in the heart of the Wawasee defense. Wawasee head coach Kayla Riportella said it was important to get in front of Schermerhorn at every opportunity.
“We were anticipating seeing her on the outside a little bit more than the middle, so that was a little bit of a surprise to us,” Riportella said. “We were focusing on finding her wherever she was on that court and putting at least a blocker up in front of her to get at least some hands on it. West Noble did a great job of varying their shots and running Schermerhorn out of every slot in that front row. In the end she was hard to defend.”
When Wawasee found a little success in defending Schermerhorn, Teel would work the ball to Tori Miller on the opposite side. Miller and Schermerhorn finished with 12 kills each.
“We got sucked into that. Schermerhorn was their go-to tonight, that was pretty obvious,” Riportella said. “So our defense was blocking that way, and cheating on the one side, and we got burned on the other. You can’t beat that; that’s good, smart volleyball.”
As has been typical of their season, the Lady Warriors were competitive in the early parts of the first and third sets, with each set tied at 10, but then gave up a long run and found themselves in a hole. In the second, set Wawasee stumbled out of the gate, and West Noble pulled away.
After giving up a 12-3 run in the third set, Wawasee would put up its last fight of the season, closing the gap to four before one last kill from Miller closed the Lady Warriors’ season.
“There’s one way to go out of a season, if it’s not with a trophy it’s going down fighting,” Riportella said. “They took that point for point. They refused to look at that score and say ‘we are defeated.’
“They took that and rolled. Every point was its own match, and they fought it to the end. That’s all I can ask for is a fight to the end.”
Junior Hannah Gaerte led Wawasee with nine kills, and classmate Peyton Rookstool added seven kills. Gaerte and Hannah-Marie Lamle had eight digs each for the Lady Warriors.
West Noble (25-8) advanced to play fellow Northeast Corner Conference member Fairfield in Saturday’s first semifinal match.
Wawasee closed the curtain on its 2017 season with a 5-28 record.
