ELY- The Ely Timberwolves volleyball squad wasn’t about to let anyone spoil their homecoming for the first match of the season on Memorial High School’s new gym floor on Tuesday, least of all the North Woods Grizzlies. While the Grizzlies were a stiff challenge, the Wolves came away with a 3-0 win.
“We are very excited to be back on our home court,” said Ely Head Coach Megan Wognum. “The players in our whole program have been incredibly patient throughout the season so far with sharing one net with six different teams. We can’t wait to have more space and time on the court.”
That enthusiasm didn’t daunt the Grizzlies, who made the opening set a see-saw battle between two teams performing at the top of their games. Ely took an early 3-0 lead, but North Woods came back to tie, and a four-point run gave the visitors a 12-8 lead. The Grizzlies kept control until the Wolves forged a 17-17 tie, and the teams fought through ties at 18,19, and 20 before the Wolves took a two-point lead and went on to close out a 26-24 win.
The second set was an intense brawl as the score was tied 13 times through 15-15. A three-point flurry put the Wolves up 18-15, and while the Grizzlies were able to close the gap to one, Ely finally prevailed 25-22.
The third set was all Ely after the Wolves put together a seven-point run to go up 12-5. Full of momentum with the match on the line, the Wolves gave no ground, keeping the Grizzlies at bay as they built the lead to nine and won 25-16.
“We are always eager to play North Woods because they are good competition,” Wognum said. “Our girls came out ready to play tonight. Our serve receive passing started a little slow but we got better as the game went on. We are running a more consistent offense which has been a good adjustment for our hitters recently. It feels like we are connecting more on the floor and making the most of every ball. We have a few things that we will work on the rest of this week at practice to get ready for the tournament on Saturday.”
North Woods Head Coach Kandi Olson said, “I thought that for the most part, we matched up pretty well with them. I thought we had an equal amount of offensive threats as they did. If not maybe even more. And I felt like we matched up in all other areas, too. So I was, it was really nice to see that. Ely is just very focused, and they’re able to really contain their ups and downs to just minute ones. And I have to give them a lot of credit for just playing a great game last night.”
Olson looked back on the first two sets to explain why Ely was able to control the third.
“The large difference was really tough to recover from, especially when you have two teams that play so tightly,” she said. “When someone has a run like that, it’s a lot of hard work to get back in the game in that situation.”
Lilli Rechichi was the go-to hitter for the Wolves, slamming down 21 kills on the night. Hanna Penke added 11 kills to the cause. Sarah Visser put up 37 set assist for the match.
For the Grizzlies, Isabel Pascuzzi led the team in kills with 12, Talise Goodsky had 21 set assists, and Tori Olson had 12 digs.
A rematch between these teams could happen on Saturday when they play in a tournament at Mesabi East.